Why So Serious?
by Strawberry Flames
Summary: No one would miss Fana Williams if she ever disappeared. When the Joker holds her hostage, a war of change begins, and if nothing else, he will win. At all costs.
1. Chapter 1: Tonight's Entertainment

Chapter One: Tonight's Entertainment

Strawberry: …I. LOVED. THE. JOKER. He deserved a story. Saw Dark Knight literally the second it came out (midnight showing) and immediately cried at the death of Heath Ledger having never cried before over it. He was intense. No wonder the poor man overdosed; just watching the movie, he made me _feel _insane. He awakened a feeling in people that is scarcely brought out, and even more so avoided and covered. But I almost lost it. He was…everything. I wanted to be in his shoes. So I decided to write a story from relatively his perspective based on a daydream I couldn't shake from my head. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my newest creation:

Fana Williams, our crazy compassionate celebrity. Say it three times fast. I guarantee it'll put a smile on your face.

* * *

The wind licked at their hair, fanning it messily out behind them. The night was crisp to the cronies, the goons, the crew. His followers. And yet, as crisp and bitter as it was to them, it had no affect whatsoever on he:

The Joker.

His swished air around in his mouth, touching his tongue to the insides of his cheeks to remind himself of the scars. He gave a crooked smile in the deep night, illuminated by the eerie streetlights that made things just _that _more difficult. Still, what a joke! What fun it would be when they walked inside with their surprise…

"It should be on a Popsicle stick," he breathed, blinking several times. "Ha ha!"

"I'm sorry?" said one of his henchmen from behind him. He rolled his eyes. No one thought about these funny things like he did. No one got it. No one was quite so insane. He ignored the question with a sigh of, "Ahhh," and rolled his shoulders back to straighten his posture. He twirled his fingers around the handle of the gun that rested in his pocket. It was very entertaining to touch. Very entertaining indeed. Just the reminder of what it could do sent a surge of excitement through his body. The intensity…

"All righty, boys and girls," he said, flicking his head ever so slightly to the side. "Well, none of you are physically girls, but I will only dare to mention the girlish nerve and emotions some of you convey…heh…we're taking entrance! Got your guns, kids? Imagine how big of a bang we'll make. Isn't that ironic? Tonight we have a good time. I do, in one case. Flee, birdies, ha ha ha! In we go!"

The cronies ran up ahead of him at a great speed that the Joker's eyes could barely catch. "Here we go," he whispered to the night, pressing forward, taking his time. "A ball," he reminded himself. "Is it a ball?" He waited for the elevator doors to shift open, clicking his fingers together in the mean time. "Maybe I'm crazy, hah. Sure seems like a ball. Reception or something. You know, there's so many…_words_. I mean, really, what's the deal? Reception is a waste of space in those little pocket dictionaries that don't have enough room in all their pages anyway. A ball could just have an extra meaning, the extra being the definition of a reception. People are kind of stupid. Why does no one think of these things?" He shrugged one shoulder and tilted his head a few times. The elevator dinged and slid open. Relinquishing his frustration at the useless words like reception, he stepped in the cramped space and spun on his heel to face the direction buttons. "Here we go—upsidaisy, buddy boy," he said, pressing the button for the second floor.

He felt that little lift in his stomach that happened when an elevator gave its first jolt of motion. It made him feel a little human; just a little. It was funny, the things that bothered him now where he considered himself almost invincible. Just that tiny twitch of his insides affected him. Someone shot a bullet through his chest and it was funny; he was laughing. Someone punched him square in the face and broke his nose, he cracked up—just as figuratively as it was literal. Pain hurt, it did indeed. But something inside him leapt at the thought. Watching people on the attack was humorous. Life was a game, he knew. It was just as funny when he was kicked as it was when someone else was. His own laughs echoed in his head.

But he wasn't laughing now as the elevator went up and up, making him queasy. Curious, he thought.

Soon enough, he was walking out of the elevator, swerving down the hall. His strides felt light to him, but he could hear how heavy they were by the noise that could be heard each time his feet met the ground. He could hear the running footsteps of his henchmen ahead; he could hear the peaceful chattering of the winners of the great surprise in their little ballroom.

The boys scrambled into a different elevator. He followed, catching up. Once inside, he forced his way to the front where he would be the star. Shining, glorified star. Up, up, up, to the last floor. And the doors opened. He pushed the man in front of him in one swift motion and stepped into the cathedral-sized room. Every surprise party needed an introduction, and this one was no different. "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," he said flatly but in a carrying voice that petrified the already stricken bystanders—even Fana Williams, who was graciously gifted with a position in the middle of a huge clutter. This clown—this interrupter—could not possibly take her hostage or anything of the sort at her give location. She blinked slowly, trying to get a good inhale. The people around her were all breathing so quickly and ferociously that there was scarcely enough air left for her. Her heart rate did not speed up. Who was this man? What was his name, his real one? The one that did not include codes or lies…

She could not detach her stare from him.

He fired his gun into the air to instill the fear. "We are tonight's entertainment," he said, the smile evident on his mouth. He traced the circle they had all made around him, held back by his armed henchmen. "Now..." he said in no more than a whisper. "...Where is Harvey Dent?"

Across the expressions of the faces he stared into, he saw only fear. Fana climbed to her toes to see over the heads of her cowering neighbors. There was one single strand of her red hair tickling over her forward that was increasingly annoying her. The massive amount of chunky mascara she had been forced to use to make her eyelashes visible was clouding her vision. Being a woman was insightfully the most irritating business in the world.

The clown was talking. His wavy, unkempt hair tinted with glowing green looked more scraggly than Fana had imagined it. He stood out—not so much by the white makeup or the raccoon circles he had in black around his glinting, dark eyes. Not even the mysterious scars made even more noticeable under the bright red slapped on smile that extended well across his cheekbones. He wore purple. Fana held in a scoff so as to seem a little less of a heartless ass. Purple was not a man color. What a fruit. He didn't look at all right in the room with endless ceilings and million dollar chandeliers. He was the only one who looked unique, excluding his masked friends. Everyone was black and white so to speak. TV evolved to color with him.

She was missing every word he said. It was hard to focus on his voice when he was standing there, looking so fantastically different. It became even more difficult when one of the women she knew escaped the crowd. She spoke, but the words did not register in Fana's mind. It was Rachel Dawes. Oh, God, why did it have to be Rachel Dawes? The nicest lady. She was strong, Fana believed. She wasn't a liar or anything. She knew this world. _Not her_. Too different.

"Well, hello, beautiful!" The Joker smoothed his hair back from his forehead and licked his lips. Fana cringed. He was walking towards Rachel, now with a knife in his hand. Fana did not know when he might have switched weapons and though she jogged her short-term memory, she could not remember. "You look nervous," he was saying now in a voice that falsely personified sympathy and understanding. Rachel was shrinking beneath his gaze as he circled around her. He nodded as though Rachel had answered, though he raised his eyebrows and pointed to his face. "Is it the scars?"

"Hey, wait a second." He turned his head, not before smiling. Someone had nerve. Some _woman _had nerve, he detailed by the voice. Two women to stand up to him all at once. The more recent speaker looked out of place at the reception…ball…party. Her hair was different. It wasn't settled, though it was tugged back relentlessly into a wavy mess, which wasn't really a mess, mess…but it was more of a cluster. Though it didn't look bad. _Kudos_, he said in his head, closing his eyes. Maybe she wasn't really meant to be there. _I'll find out_.

"Well, well, well," he said. His tongue trailed across his lower lip. "Hehe…my fair lady. What brings you to center stage in the middle of this show? 'Wait a second,' you say. Why? What am I waiting for, girly miss?" He turned his body to be parallel with her. "Is this your friend?" His gloved hands found Rachel's ear and tugged on it, but she made only a short wince, recovering quickly.

Fana realized that she had ended up in the front of her cluster. She gulped now, having only considered speaking at all from the middle, to be inconspicuous. But clearly now there was no turning back. She was standing in front of a madman with red, hungry lips. "Yes, she is my friend," Fana uttered, throwing the clown a bone. "I would like you to wait, because…" Hell, was the thrill of adventure worth the dire risk she would be putting herself at? "Because don't take her."

"That was poor grammar." Fana blinked at his rebuttal.

"Uh…well…I mean, just don't take her," she continued. "Minus the because. Don't hurt her."

"Oh, no, sweetheart." He gently shut his eyes and swayed his head from side to side, mulling over what would be the funniest move to make now. He chuckled a little before he started towards the girl with hair like cinnamon. She was rather pale, he noted. _Which isn't bad at all…hehe_, he thought, reminding himself of the white he had splashed over his face. She wasn't moving back, even as he was only feet away from here. "One, two…" he began counting his steps. "Three…four. No, no, no, no, dear, sweet rebel." Fana's throat tensed as his hot breath swam over her face now that he was standing straight in front of her. In her heels, there wouldn't have been a great height difference between them, but she had worn flat ballet shoes. And that unasailably made him a good amount taller. Another inch closer, she recorded, and their noses might well have touched. She tried to swallow, but her mouth had turned to the Sahara. "I'm not going to hurt _her_," he hissed into her face. She held her breath. "Actually…" He raised both his hands, though he held his knife in one of them. "I wasn't going to take anyone but my buddy Harvey Dent. That's D-E-N-T. But you know…" He looked behind him a few times, then turned back to face Fana. "…He doesn't seem to be here!" he whispered, stifling laughter. "Well, heh…no doubt he _is_, but I suddenly feel completely compelled to satisfy myself sooner rather than later. I don't want to wait around for Mr. Dent to show up. Gasp, gasp! Or better yet, _you_ could be the bait!"

And without another word, he spun Fana around, his fingers creeping across her neck around her collarbone. He kept a tight hold on her, his knife poked delicately into her jaw. His free hand was clapped over her mouth, the leather glove tasting like the foulest, rotten substance she had ever had the misfortune to taste. She considered biting into his hand, but she knew it would only get her into more trouble.

Rachel was yelling. There was a look of utter horror on her face as the Joker backed slowly towards the elevator with Fana being dragged up against him as he went. "OK, my hearty drinkers," he said, with a smirk. He nodded at his crew to retreat, but keep their guns ready. The bystanders were still unmoving, full of fear. "This little lady isn't getting hurt," he whispered in Fana's ear so that no one else could hear. "Not today, not tomorrow, and not at any point intentionally while you are in my hands. But they don't need to know that." He looked back up at the partygoers, looking so confused and hurt and wrecked. That's all they were—a bunch of wreckage. "Bring me Harvey Dent, within three days. Hand him over to me. Have no fear, kiddies—" Quickly, so fast that Fana could barely see, he drew a card from his sleeve and flicked it out onto the floor. "—here's my card. You'll know where to find me."

Back in the elevator, the Joker tossed Fana carelessly into the corner. He knew she wouldn't dare try to escape with so many arms around her. He giggled, tossing his head back and sighing, strangely pleased with himself.

He was startled by the sound of her voice. "Where are you taking me?" she said calmly. He looked at her for a moment, feeling as though his happiness and triumph had been emptied. But he was not angry, either. He had just been drained of emotion at the sight of her disinterest in the situation. She was not squealing. Not a squealer…but boy, oh, boy, wasn't that a bummer? They were the most fun!

"My, my, we're calm aren't we?" he chanted. He snorted, suddenly somewhat annoyed. "But I prefer surprises. Games. And what fun is a game if you know exactly what's coming to you?" He winked. She made no reply but the redirection of her attention to her feet.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2: The Ice House

Chapter Two: The Icehouse

Strawberry: Usually I do scripts before each chapter of my stories, but for this one, I don't think I can bring myself to spoil the serious mood with…too much…comedy…what?

Joker: -appears in nurse outfit-

Strawberry: O.O No, no, no, you're not supposed to come in here. I didn't want any scripts. –cries- Must…resist!

Joker: -starts humming- This is ridiculous…in my eyes. And that's saying something. I'm going to six flags and riding the Joker. Do you KNOW how fast that thing goes? I mean, I wouldn't call myself conceited, but it's a really, really fun ride. And really, it is hard not to marvel at what I can do with a knife. –turns to Strawberry- Wanna smile?

Strawberry: OK, gotta go! Hehe, uh…really, great response on the first chapter. I really was happy that you all read it. I hope you like this one just as much and ignore my desire to do scripts again…Thanks so much. 3

* * *

Outside, Fana felt all the more empty while the Joker stood behind her, pressed up against her and wriggling his hands around her wrists as he tied something around them. "Now, I'm just a little bored," he mumbled. She could feel his mouth move against the back of her head as he spoke. She evaded the shiver she yearned to unleash. "What's your name? –No never mind, that doesn't matter. But as I was saying…I don't like being bored. And when I'm bored I…impose upon adventure." His hands crept up to her shoulders once he had the girl tied. "So I'm taking a risk. Not that I find you a real, plausible threat, but it's always a risk to leave a captured woman free to speak. Hah, I don't even trust men enough to leave their mouths free of duct tape! But women. My, my, can they scream and talk and just…just make things annoying." He extracted the tape from his pocket and dangled it in front of the girl's face. "Here's my adventure," he hissed. He could feel how outwardly she had turned herself to stone. Somewhat annoyed that her reaction was not slightly bigger, he dropped the tape on the ground at her feet. "I'm leaving your mouth free to do as it would like. You don't scream, do you…mmm-missy…?" He licked his lips, letting her soak in his annunciation. "So let's put that ability to shut yourself up to the test."

Without another word, he pushed her forward and shoved her through the car door. He'd taken the car just an hour or so before. And funny the manner in which he'd snatched it! He gave a short internal laugh before stepping through the door, pushing his bait further away from him on the seat. He sprawled out with a satisfied sigh, curling his right hand into a fist around a hook fastened to the top of the car. He stretched the muscles of his mouth, feeling the occasional pull that still lingered from the wounds around his mouth. How funny…what fools. If only Daddy could see him now…

Or rather, if only Daddy could watch himself _die_, now that his son had the power to kill him.

The Joker's chest tensed. No, he had no room for anger. There was no room for any of those little emotions that he'd worked so hard to block out of his system. He had and needed only a good sense of humor and happiness. And happiness came from whatever was funny. If he could make everything funny, than he could be happy for as long as he wished. Jokes. _I love it_, he thought. Although what a petty emotion love was. Such affection for some little token that may be only a short-lived philosophy…

His racing thoughts were interrupted by a pathetic cough from his left. He sniffed, turning his head so that he could see her—the girl he had taken. So young and delicate her features…so little and innocent she was. Hilarious! "I'm neglecting you," he stated simply with a grin so false and sarcastic that it might have caused Fana to unleash a blood-curdling scream just to bother this out-of-his-mind man.

"No worries," she spat through gritted teeth, eyeing him at only a glance. "I'm perfectly content." _Which is an utter lie_, she told herself. But not something so unusual. There was no way that any sane person could be content in the cramped, most-likely stolen vehicle with a man in makeup—not even well applied. And yet, she did not shudder and shake at the thought of the situation, but sat perfectly still in her uncomfortable position with her hands of no use to her. Something was strangely…all right; perhaps all because he had whispered those words to her: the promise he'd uttered that he didn't plan on hurting her as long as he held her there. Then again, could she honestly rest assured in that, knowing that he was plainly deserving of an institution? Besides, he might use some loophole as the craziest ones always did. He had only said that he wouldn't hurt her while she was being held captive. That still didn't cover her safety when she was set loose—_if_ she wasset loose…

"You are just as pleasantly different as you are _un_pleasantly…different," he said to her with a voice like a strangled snake. "I personally…am rather fond of any sort of difference in humans…simple, that's what they are. Really…_really_…" He reached out and smoothed her silken hair against her head sharply, the speed with which he did it quickening as his annoyance did. "…simple. Now." His hand shot back, making Fana jump. "I've changed my mind—I would, as a matter of fact, like to know what your name is." She could see the shadows of his cheekbones moving as he his tongue danced in his mouth again.

"I'd like to know your name, too," said Fana, shooting him an unkind and disagreeable glare. "So perhaps we are both out of luck. And wouldn't you say I have more right to know _your _name than you have right to know mine? I'm your victim, buddy. I got a nice big load of questions that I know you won't answer, though you should. My rights are first priori—"

"I wouldn't trod on the matter of either of our rights, my sweet…not while I'm so readily…prepared, and you are in such a wonderfully victimized position." In one swift motion, he pulled out his gun and held it right at Fana's neck. It was then that her fear finally kicked in to a normal extent. But it was too late to scream; they had disappeared into darkness. "Now what…" In the dark, Fana could not see what he had done, but the gun made a rather loud but quick clicking sound. "…Do they call you back at all of those raging parties?" he asked, the "S"-sound of his last word lingering until it was no more than a wisp of smoke.

Swallowing, Fana's eyes darted quickly to the gun before returning to the clown's stone white face. "Fana," she told him. "Will…Williams." She was hesitant to speak her last name, though after thinking about it, she realized that it would do her no further harm. "I…"

"'Did not belong at that party.'" He twisted a strand of his own hair, the scent of it almost too much to handle. He breathed a quick, "Hah…" as he glanced in Fana's direction. He inhaled, storing the air in his cheeks, suppressing laughter that would have upset the entire vehicle. Her face was thunderstruck, as though he had truly stolen the words from her mouth. Hell, maybe he really had! Her eyes glinted with uncanny brightness, with an auburn glow that seemed to cast light on at least his left side. Her thin mouth was pursed, whether for fear or because of stubbornness. Perhaps she would have preferred him to have left her to keep duct tape over her mouth. But what did it matter what _she _wanted? She was just a marker in the game; he was the only player. "I'm right, am I, Fana Willana? Speaking of which, I'll wager you had a fairly difficult time in school back in the day…and that day might not have been very long ago…with such a name, hahaha!" She did not shift but to speak.

"That's right," she answered stiffly. Behind her back, she balled her hands into fists, her nails cutting into her palms uncomfortably. "On both accounts."

"So why, she who…obliges…were you there, out of place? Different. Wrong."

Her face heated, knowing very well that he was reading her emotions perfectly. He knew that she had been uncomfortable at Harvey's party. She gave off vibes. She was such a human. Imperfection described them all. "Rachel," she said swiftly. "The woman who spoke to you, when you…came. I know her, and she's friends with Bruce Wayne, and has been dating Har—"

She'd said much too much.

The muscles in his neck jerked. He knew why she had stopped speaking. She was under the impression that he didn't know that little miss Rachel was Harvey's new squeeze. Oh, he knew that already. And he did not need anyone to have connections to Harvey. Fana was his bait, and he knew perfectly well that people were stupid and sly all at once. They would turn in strong, manly man Harvey Dent, in order to save frail and incapable Fana Williams because she was a woman. _Prejudice_, he thought, smacking his lips together. _Women get so little credit these days…then again, their feet are smaller…only so they can stand nearer the stove! Hah! _He hummed a little bit before recognizing Fana's presence again. "Oh, you don't have to worry," he assured her with a smirk. "I'm a man of my word. I told you you're not getting hurt as long as you're in my captivity…which may, in fact, turn out to be longer than three days as I'd promised the good people of the party. I asked for Harvey Dent—I didn't ask for any Rachel, did I? Eh…you must be a _fan of _distrust in the male species. And there's another joke on you!"

"If you're gonna be making fun of my name for a while, can I ask a favor?" Fana said, unable to remove her gaze from the scars around the Joker's mouth. She heard him make a low noise in the very back of his throat; the deepest end that produced the lowest grumbling sound. The corners of his mouth curled.

"You can ask," he remarked. "Doesn't mean you'll get the response you'd like." Fana sneered.

"You keep tossing your saliva," she stated. "I'd like it if you stopped, just while I'm here. The sound gets to me."

He stared at her. Tossing his saliva? What was that supposed to mean? "I'm not picking up on your lingo." Now he remembered why he especially took care in duct taping the mouths of women. Not that Fana had done much in the way of speaking to displease him, but she had certainly done her fair share of getting to the most human nerves he had anymore. She had started when they'd been in the elevator, and she had posed one simple question to him with little to no fear or uncertainty. Where were her scrawny human instincts that gave him such pleasure to watch as they ground and ground against each other, conflicting until a person would explode from the inside out?

"You lick your lips and I can hear your tongue running along the inside of your mouth," she informed him, shuddering only briefly. She hated the sound it made; the sound of saliva mixing around so sickeningly. "It makes a very distinct, smacking and clapping noise. I can't stand it. It plucks my nerves."

"There's a human trait," he glowered to himself. Fana appeared ignorant of any further speech on his part. Ignorance. That was another one. "Why don't you put yourself in my shoes for just a little teensy while?" he offered, sliding a hand slowly into his pocket. "Listen to a story I have to tell you. These scars—you see 'em? You must. Nobody misses them." He took hold of his knife and switched it open; the girl didn't notice in the dark. He moved closer to her on the seat and inclined his body towards her. "They're prominent, if you haven't taken that in so well. They cut deep. When something like that is…is…_ingrained_ in your mouth, you make a lot more motions." Fana went white as his hand crept up to her face, cupping her cheek. He stretched his arm momentarily before bringing it up, and pressing his knife calmly to the corner of her flowered lips. She felt suddenly numb as the cold blade stood against her, unmoving…so menacing. Her whole body was tingling and her mind went blank.

"I wouldn't have to 'toss my saliva' so much if it weren't for the scars," he growled. "Do you want to know how I got these scars? Well, my angelic mother…was always a little…different. Now don't take that the wrong way; different is a good thing. But there are exceptions to everything. She had this wild, _really wild_ hair and these staring eyes. She slept with millions of men—millions!—for a living. That's how I came about, as an accident. Mommy was a real bleeding heart, and she wouldn't ever kill a little baby, especially not one in her own tummy. So she opted to give birth—in an alley, I've been told—and out I popped. But there was nowhere to keep me. No sturdy house, no matter how cheap, and no daycare. She couldn't face the failure. So I went everywhere she went; oh, I believe she loved me a real nice amount. And I watched her selling herself. Well, Fana banana, it isn't fun watching your mama living that way. So I didn't smile anymore. I had this ugly mug, and one day, it started to hurt mommy more than even she could hurt herself. 'Smile, son, please!' she would beg me. But somewhere along the lines, I had forgotten how to." His breath came in cracks and wheezes. He shook his head, drawing it closer to Fana's face. "'I can't stand to see you frowning, my angel!' she said. 'How I wish you would smile again.' So she took this knife—the one I have right here…" He wiggled it a little. "…And stuck it in my mouth just like this." He forced Fana's mouth open, shoving the little pocketknife inside. Beads of sweat were escaping her pores are she whimpered around the blade. "'Smile…' she cooed as she…_ripped _it up the sides of my face." He jerked the knife, causing Fana to jump. 'Smile!'"

Fana could feel his hands shaking with anger. He readjusted the knife several times and still, she heard him chewing on his cheeks as his saliva smacked and popped so loudly in the silent, speeding car. She tried focusing on something other than the red smile around his mouth and aimed to look at the rest of his face, though she was not sure she wanted to. She was startled when their eyes met, his stare impossible to break through his glassy, midnight eyes. The twisted onyx circles edging them were barely evident in the shadows of the dark. All that she could be sure of was the fluorescent white and that smile.

She tipped her head to the right gradually. Was his story true? And if it was, was she really considering justifying everything she knew he must have done and was going to do and would do? _I may possibly be losing my mind_, she thought distantly as she sat opposite the man dressed as a clown, their faces centimeters apart where she could smell his putrid breath that somehow was not so horrible. His knife, she remembered, was still planted in her mouth, and he was radiating the temptation to carve the same smile that rested on his face into hers.

His heart was racing with excitement. Every ounce of resistance he had was being used to keep from moving the knife. "I said I wouldn't," he sang, rocking his head from side to side and grinning while she continued to stare at him in horror. Clenching his jaw, he drew his arms back, snapping her neck as best he could as he went. He stowed his knife away in his pocket again and sneered. "Ah, and here we are," he said, peering out the window. "You, angel cakes, are getting a nice stay in an ice house. Not only is it cold…" He grabbed her arm and flung the door of the car open before it had come to a complete stop. "…It's empty and dark," he finished, placing special emphasis on the "k".

Fana tripped after him, sure her arm must have been jerked from its socket by now. She could hardly see where they were going in the combined difficulty of the dark and their speed. He continuously tugged on her arm, suggesting her to quicken her pace, but she could not. "You, you, you're staggering me," he snarled in upset, whirling around and spinning her around so that she was in front of him. He pushed her straight forward now, until they went crashing through a door. Another man who had climbed into the passenger seat with them before had taken hold of Fana, pulling her backwards with an array of forces, finally sitting her down in a little wooden chair that was only nameable by its shape; there were no lights, making the rink even colder. "Have a good stay, Miss Williams," she could hear the Joker saying. He remained stationary in the doorway, staring out into the night. There was a click and she saw his hand around a master switch as the lights rang on. He turned to look at her as the man—she noted that he was in a plastic clown mask—picked up all of her and the chair and walked towards the glassed-off ice. He set the chair down on the cold, iced surface and gave her a push towards the middle. She clutched the back of it, though her hands were still tied. "I'll be here _all _night," came his voice. "Let's see how you keep all that squealing in now. Aha!"

And as he closed to door of the ice house, she could hear his loud and triumphant cackled echoing greatly in the area.


	3. Chapter 3: Agent of Chaos

Chapter Three: Agent of Chaos

Strawberry: The third time I saw the movie in theaters, I dressed up. There's a few pictures on my profile, I believe. I now own the movie, though I'll admit to having illegally watched it via interweb… However, it feels so much better to be able to have it playing all day long, over and over again. It makes me really feel good. I don't know. Does that make you crazy? But anyway, sorry for the delay...school starting and plays starting can monopolize a person's time... however, please do enjoy!

* * *

"Miss Williams," the Joker was hissing. "Do you like…to ice skate?" Fana eyed him calmly. Her arms were entirely immobile at the back of the chair. She could have simply stood up and walked away. She could get someone to untie her hands later. All that mattered was that she was completely free to escape at any moment, and he did not seem to care or perhaps notice. Whichever of the two things it was, she decided to simply stay put—as if she had anywhere to go as an alternative. Then again, perhaps her shoddy one-room apartment would feel a lot homier after escaping the clutches of a man wearing makeup. Who knew?

"Do you?" he said again. She looked entirely at ease from where he stood. He noticed her shivering a little but he deducted that it was only from the cold, for he had seen enough of her to know that she did not conform to the most human feelings of fear. Perhaps he would be bored after all with this hostage. She seemed almost…too much like him. That was it. Not human enough to really be any fun.

"I haven't been ice skating since I was young," she answered at last, and he almost gave in to a sigh. He stared into her amber eyes. His own narrowed as he looked for some kind of emotion in her. He was nowhere near being able to read her thoughts, and that was unusual. Fana looked back at him, her eyebrows beginning to knit together at the middle of her forehead as she sat and wondered what he might have planned for her—what he might have been planning right then, as he gawked at her. Suddenly he twitched and shook his head so fast that she could hardly see. With a deep groan, he straightened up and turned his head to the side, looking out to a section of the ice skating rink that might have once been a food court. There were three men in clown masks sitting inside, the glass windows of the area broken, and the door ripped off so that the entire room was visible. The Joker cleared his throat rather quietly, but it carried through the empty icehouse loud enough to catch the attention of his henchmen. All three of them perked up, and one of them rose slightly from the table, ready to serve. He pointed a finger impatiently at something in the room, and Fana watched the clowns turn and look behind and around them until two of them seemed to catch sight of what the Joker wanted. They scrambled to the door with something in hand.

Fana watched a bottle of water fly through the air. It was a plastic disposable bottle, one that would usually have a label but did not. He nonchalantly stretched out the fingers of his left hand, exposing his palm. He was standing on the ice, where balance was scarce, but he looked as though he had been walking on the slippery surface all his life as the bottle crashed into his hand with a crackle of the plastic.

He took a gentle step on the ice, and he shivered with unkempt glee as he noticed Fana cringe slightly away from him, as if she were afraid that he might go back on his word. Oh, he had no intention of hurting her. All of those…people…they just thought he was completely insensitive to life…well, they finally had something accurate. _Hee hee, ha, mmha…People, people, people, please use those brains! It's enough to play with a victim. I don't have to kill them unless they become…a roadblock…_ He unscrewed the cap of the bottle of water and gave it a shake once it was open so that some of the water splashed onto the ice beneath his feet. He grinned. _"Out of dust we were created; to dust we shall return"… _"Fana banana," he said, snickering as he sensed her argument against the term. "You're not a roadblock."

In a swift motion, he tilted his head back and dumped some of the liquid into his mouth without touching the mouth of the bottle to his lips. "So," he said, and the water was almost audible as it slipped down his throat. "Why has it been so long since you've ice skated? I hear it's good for the muscles. Those skaters are strong people, you know…what'll you do when you're in a difficult situation and you can't defend yourself because you never built your leg muscles and can't deliver a good kick?" He locked the air in his mouth and watched for some kind of stirring in her stomach or mind, any kind of indirect movement that would determine some kind of discomfort.

She gave him nothing.

"Sometimes…" His ears perked and he raised his eyebrows, suggesting she continue. Her throat was dry and scratchy, though she had only been in the icehouse for half an hour at most. "…You just don't get the opportunity to do certain things," she said quietly. She stared off into the corner. The Joker was reading her. He watched at her eyelids fell so that her expression was half-lit. He knew that she was shutting down her emotions. He himself had to fight the inner desire to stop the barrier she was creating by yelling or finding something sensitive to whatever caused her to flinch away. "I don't know you or anything about you. Nothing about your past or what…whatever. I don't know if you ice skated when…"

Fana stopped and stayed silent, refocusing her attention to him. She was not sure if she had any reasoning for thinking so, but she was left wondering if she had taken a step too far into his past. She did not mean to imply that she was going to pry into his life and try to understand him. She knew that there was most likely no hope of that. The goal was to make it out alive, and in the back of her mind, there was no doubt that he would stay true to his promise, no matter how out of his mind he might have been.

She noticed him stretch his jaw. His lips were pursed together, the red paint accentuating them eerily. He tossed his saliva and she winced ever so slightly. There was a slightly demonic edge to his eyes, though they were rolling around, scanning the room as if he were expected to come across something he had not previously noticed. For a brief millisecond that, when ended, she could not believe having actually considered, she wanted to sympathize with him. There must have been something wrong and disturbing that had affected him. Perhaps it was the story of his mother that he could have even been lying about. But perhaps it was true, and if it were the case, Fana could not help comparing her own life to his, though it made her feel guilty and out of her own mind.

Something clicked in the Joker's mind. Fana could see the light bulb flash on over his head as he thought of something that she dared not try to guess. "You!" he shouted suddenly, glee echoing between his vocal chords. She jumped in the chair, startled and made worse by the realization that her movement had caused her to skid a few centimeters backwards on the ice. Water in hand, he galloped over to Fana, immersing himself in her blank, white expression like a dear in headlights. "Fwoom!" he shouted, clapping his hand against the bottle he held with the other. More liquid spilled onto the floor, this time splashing onto his purple suit and Fana's ankles. He smirked at the water droplets running down her left leg, knowing it must have been cold. "Fana! Darling, I know something about you." As he ran he gave a jump and let himself slide across the ice, making sure to make it directly into her path so that he could grab the back of her chair and pull her along with him as he slid. "I know something, I know it, I know it, I _know _it, you sneaky little sidekick!" He giggled as he skated around the rink on his shoes, the frozen air biting as his makeup-smeared face devilishly. He was power. He was on top of the world as he twirled around a hostage, hostage, hostage, in a skating rink, rink, rinkety-rink…

Fana was falling forward, stopped only by her arms secured behind her in the chair. She bit her tongue, flexing each muscle she could to keep herself from falling onto the ice if he decided to drop her. He very well might have, if she continued circulating weight in his opposite direction. She shut her eyes, slightly dizzy as he swung her around and she could hear him cackling in the empty rink. He smacked his lips together and hummed, thinking of his demon father, his lifeless mother, his one chance at a normal life…all had been sucked away: and was there any possible means of making the entire idea funnier! Solitude. Any transcendentalist would have argued that solitude was a beautiful thing and deserved to be honored by those who did not have the gift. Perhaps it was beautiful. If humor and beauty were interchangeable, that is…"Round and round and round they go." He threw the water behind him as his ran along the walls, laughing at how chaotic it all was. "Where they stop, nobody—"

The string that had been fastened around Fana's hands audibly ripped apart and she went flying into the center of the rink, skidding along, emotionless as she could barely comprehend anything having happened. "Oohha, haha, hahaha!" he laughed, envious of her unexpected adventure. He enthusiastically threw himself to the ground, scrambling forward on his knees toward Fana, whose face was buried on the floor, though she looked to have been doing her best to roll over. He slid up next to her, and rested his head on the ice, shaking with a moving laughter that came from his lowest cavity of being.

Her wrists were numb. She was not sure if they were even there at all as she frantically tried to lift herself to her feet. She was dizzy and now had a splitting headache due to the way she had been smashed against the floor. She knew her eyes to be open, but was not certain that she had not gone blind, as she was looking at a thin sheet of white with sparkling bugs flying all around her peripheral vision. She could feel something warm trickling onto her face, and her ears were roaring painfully, though the one thing she could hear above it was laughter. "Oh, no, no, come here…"

The laughter died away. Fana felt the cold transfer to her back and she had to shut her eyes once more as the ceiling became the ceiling again the floor was out of her sight. She muttered a gentle, "Ow," that carried musically to his ears. Ow? She wasn't crying. His hands were curled around her upper arms as she lay there with her eyes closed and blood running from one side of her head. Her expression was dormant, as though she had died. He squinted curiously. Her chest was rising and falling steadily and he could feel her pulse strongly even from her arms. With some kind of hopeful stare, he noticed her eyelashes batting together soothingly, as if they were a song with the tune of a lullaby. He was reminded of the reception or party or ball…he thought of the elevator and how it had been so _hilarious _to watch the people in the room do their best to look sturdy when they were positively _leaking _fear. Everything was funny! It was all a joke; the pain was a joke, the weapons were a joke, the fear was a joke, the girl was a joke, the scars were a joke… even the scars, yes. Even they themselves instilled wild glee within him to know that he had beaten humanity. He had triumphed over pain and sadness, regret and fear.

And then there was the elevator that made his stomach squirm as it rose to where more humor lie. He wondered vaguely if a man could really beat humanity after all if he were still breathing, if his heart still beat, if an elevators lift made his stomach dance. Could he really have beaten humanity if he could not tear his eyes away from Fana's daft simplicity in aura? The squirming of stomach, the blind fascination…humanity.

Her eyes opened very slowly and rested directly and instantly upon him. He stared back with no trace of a smile, peaking her interest. He was distressed in his curiosity, his seriousness of character. It was all made worse when her eyes had opened. There was an immediate feeling that overtook him, that seemed to lighten a sort of bind across his chest that he had not noticed. He felt overly compelled to exhale deeply. Relief. Was there some reason for him to be relieved? Fana saw his expression contort and heard a growl escape the pit of his throat. He looked almost sane for a brief moment. Sane and caring or perhaps even worried. Then he sneered and hissed in some sort of stressed anger at something she could not figure out. Before she had bore no curiosity for him, believing it impossible to figure him out. Yet there she was, trying her hardest to figure out what he was thinking or what had made him the way he was. The scars… Up close she could see how much the wounds must have hurt. She could scarcely imagine having her face thoroughly carved, and if he were truthful, she could rarely stomach the idea that his mother had been crazy enough to do it to him in the first place.

"Your head is empty," he whispered, pulling off one of his gloves and rubbing his fingers on her face to remove some of the blood. He lifted his hand and examined the stains of red that had been left from it. His fingers and palms were already covered with white, chalky paint from the morning. Mixed with the blood, he felt somewhat…

He felt like himself. That was what mattered, it was all that was important…it was what was funny!

He put a hand on the back of Fana's neck. Half-heartedly, she waited for him to pull a knife to her eyes and retell the story of his scars, but he did not. He simply lifted her into a sitting position and offered her his forearm for her to grab onto as he pulled her to her feet. He no longer was looking in her direction. For a series of minutes, he looked glum and dismal, as if he were a little boy, watching his mother prostitute herself to pay for both of their lives…

As soon as she had thought it, he had planted a smile on his face. "Heh…look at you," he said with mock impression. She could barely keep her vision steady let alone attempt to figure out what had happened to her or where she was bleeding from. "This is what happens when you can't see the funny side. Listen, kiddo…we were sliding around, getting dizzy, and then bam! You get hurt. But why does the entire mood have to change? If you have fun, you're having fun! When something…unexpected happens, it's just not necessary to make such a drastic change in emotion. It gets you all…twisted and out of your mind. It's wrong…humans are all wrong, Fana. I can teach you all about that." He was carting her out of the rink and into some area of concession where there was a line of benches against each wall. He set her on one of them and disappeared around the corner for a bit. Fana looked after him, half wondering where she had been stuck. She knew well that she had been taken by the Joker. She knew well that she was in an icehouse. What she did not know was that he might have been something worth her intellect or wonder. His story…over the blasting of her ears, she yearned to hear his story.

"You gotta look at the irony of things," came his tainted voice from wherever he had gone. Fana could tell that he was approaching. Soon enough, she noticed him rounding the corner towards the bench with a dripping rag in his hands. He twirled it around in his hands, moving it this way in that to make it dance in front of him. He snapped it twice and repeated the process. "Hey, hey." His breath blew over her face hotly. He slapped the damp rag against her forehead and started dabbing at it. He then tapped her head and nodded to her, hoping to give her the idea that it was her turn to fix herself. "Caught on," he croaked when she took hold of the rag and began cleaning her cut on her own. "Don't feel bad, Fana. Everyone needs to be taught. And listen…" He sat down next to her and ruffled her hair, finally destroying the mess of a hairdo she'd had sloppily done. Her ginger hair fell chaotically to her shoulders. She did not appear to have noticed. "Listen, we all make mistakes. Look at me! I just threw you on the ice when we were having fun…chaos is what a mistake is. Mmha…I'm an agent…of chaos."

Fana still felt woozy, but could easily detect his devious smirk as he stood, laughing, and turned off the master switch the minute he reached the doorway. _Curiosity is chaos_, he thought, snorting with laughter.

_Curiosity is chaos_, she thought, massaging her temples. She wondered how long she would be there with him before she could no longer contain herself and had to know what went on in his head and what the reason was.

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PS. I never update unless I get reviews xD


	4. Message to Readers: With Love

**Hi everybody,**

**I know it was a long time ago that I started this story. I know a lot of people probably aren't that hyped up about any new chapters it may have, but I do hope there are still those of you interested. And if there ARE those of you interested, I would sincerely love it if you would let me know via review.**

**I really like writing this story. I think it's the most fun I've ever had writing something because I get to create an explanation for something that was never explained. A lot of people always want to know what REALLY happens once the camera stops rolling. You hope for a sequel, but when you realize there really isn't going to be on to fulfill all your questions, you turn to fanfictions for made up reasons, ya know?**

**I had a bit of writer's block for a LONG while. And soon enough, I wasn't even bothering to check if it was gone or not. I was just so busy. And I am really sorry for that...  
**

**I want to hear that you all like my made-up reasons. I want to hear that you're interested in knowing what someone else has to say about what's wrong with the Joker. If I don't know, what sense is there in continuing? And I'd like to continue. I'm done with the fourth chapter, and I think it's well done, but I don't want to put it up unless there's any real motivation for continuing. So tell me something, even if it's something little. If you'll do an "I'll review if you review" sort of deal, I'm up for it. I'll read your stories, provided I know the movie/book/show/etc… I just want to hear something little. **

**So…that's it basically :] I just want some reviews…**

**Want a preview for a later chapter? One of my favorite interactions between he and Fana:**

"You don't trust me." Fana eyed him suspiciously. She tried to fix her gaze upon his eyes but could not seem to tear her attention away from his curving mouth for whatever reason. She simply squinted at him, silently asking for his reasoning but not secure enough in herself to sincerely wonder. "That's good," he edged simply. "You shouldn't." His following smile made Fana fearfully wonder if any progress she credited herself with having made might have been destroyed, but when he laughed, it was less heavy and had and air of awkwardness, as though it were an attempt at a real, genuine laugh rather than a psychotic one. "You want to…" he said, raising his eyebrows. "But you shouldn't."

**xD**

**Love,**

**Strawberry**

**P.S. REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW!**

**P.P.S. This will be gone eventually... just leaving it up for the time being. Otherwise it's all out of order and I'll lose my mind. Or maybe it won't, because I like to remind people of things :D  
**


	5. Chapter 4: Midnight Fireworks

Chapter Four: Midnight Fireworks

Strawberry: I think this one is very personal on both Fana and the Joker's POVs. There's a lot less interaction between them, and I decided to do this so I could give a feel for what's going on in their minds. Let me know if you're curious; I get the feeling this will end up being one of the longer-running stories, so I think that every few chapters, I might add a little thought commentary much like the ones in this chapter. But only if you like the idea! Thank you for reading, and please do review. :]

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Fana could not seem to tear her eyes away from the clock that hung above the benches opposite her. He was watching her intently from the food court, resting his face in the palm of his hand. She was bleeding anticipation as she lay on her back with a cold cloth draped across her forehead. She had never mentioned what compelled her to put it there, but he could only guess that there was either no reason at all or a very good one. What stupid looking hair she had! It was a mess of waving orange spread out down to her shoulders. He giggled. _Clownish…ha! _he thought, intending to keep her from noticing his humble glare. He cracked his neck and loosened his collar.

He inhaled and smelled a rotten smell about him. He first deducted that it must have been from old food left in the room or something of the sort. Then, realizing that it was more local, he decided that it was the stench wafting from his greased hair. He briefly thought to wash it, as it was a terribly unpleasant smell that he knew would not be gotten rid of unless washed. But then he realized that he was above all of that nonsense of impressing others or himself. He did not need to smell wonderful or have flashy clothes. He liked his suit, and he would wear it whenever he saw fit to. _A shower would be nice though…_ he admitted. He shut his eyes and shifted his weight back to both of his legs and began walking towards the refrigerator that was lodged in the corner of the room between two cabinets.

Opening the door made a kindly sucking sound that fulfilled some desire for noise briefly until the hum of its cold-motor swam to his ears. He scrunched up his face, but resorted to raising his brow again when he spotted a Styrofoam box with the word, "Donny" written across it in black ink. "Hmm!" He removed it from the shelf and sneaked a peak at its contents to find half-frozen nachos that must have been left there for who knew how long. Even so, he was starving. It had taken him a few personal experiences to recognize that the later he stayed up, the hungrier he managed to feel. "They say you burn the most calories when you sleep," he said, shrugging and removing one of the frozen chips with a resounding _crack_.

Realizing instantly that the chips were only frozen on the outside, he bit into the soft, floppy center of one and chewed quickly as if he were a victim of schizophrenia. He hummed a sweet tune of delicate laughter as he shoveled another pile of chips into his mouth, this time taking with him a solid pile of cheese that tasted like something rancid. As he picked each one up, he examined his fingers, covered with acrylic paint and still the remnants of Fana's head wound. Vaguely, he wondered if she was thinking about skating, knowing well that he was thinking about skating. The mere thought of it had so very nearly touched his mind that he was forced to journey towards the ice rink where little fluorescent lights touched the glazed floor.

He stopped in his tracks and smiled hugely at his freshest idea. He went to the very edge of the rink and into a booth, seating himself matter-of-factly to make sure he seemed to know exactly what he was doing. "Which to choose, which to choose…" he grumbled, flittering five fingers over the rows of buttons. Finally he twirled his wrist with a bleak, "Aha!" and let his index finger fall upon a red circle labeled, **Disco Lighting**. When he pressed it, his face lit up in awe at the rainbow lights filling the room. He escaped the booth as suddenly as he had gone to it and trotted into the rink, sailing around on the soles of his shoes, carrying the box of nachos in his hand. It was freedom to soar in that manner. He felt so desperately blissful that his whole past could have been ignored. He reminded himself that his past was such a huge, broad mass of pain that it was difficult not to think about it, even if it was…funny. At the very least, it was something to laugh about. But then again, so was everything, so perhaps it was not saying much.

Colors bounded around curiously on the floor. He watched them carefully, chasing the blue circle and then the red, the yellow, green, purple…all splattered upon the mist of white. He was so carefree, so untroubled, so inhuman…all of that made the world so beautiful, and yet he was the only one that could see it in all its ugliness.

He popped a soggy pile of nachos into his mouth. After each bite, he licked his lips and realized that the red greasepaint had a metallic taste, a sort that resembled blood. He looked at his feet, thinking, _I'm no vampire…heehee, but there's no harm in a little blood every once in a while_. He closed his eyes in peace, running his tongue along his lower lip, tasting and sucking on the paint as if it were his lifeline. Once it had been dampened, he noticed that it left imprints on a chip when he took a bite from it. Edging the half circle bite-mark, there was a fringe of red on it. _Sssssssmile…_ he chanted in his mind.

Suddenly, his head was spinning. He felt dizzied and faint, and when he tried to laugh at himself for it, his insides choked on themselves and he doubled over, still desperately trying to let a laugh escape his lips. "Harvey De…_ent_," he remarked. "You just couldn't…" He let himself fall backwards, unstrained, onto the ice, receiving a dull blow that pained a wound on his lower back. His head jutted forward as if he were a mess of fabric and stuffing, able to be tossed about every which way. His chest cavity felt suddenly empty, and his heart skipped several beats. "Phahaha, ya just couldn't _show _up and give meee what I wanted…so I've…I've gotta be landed with F—Fana, Anna. And you know what? She's just…she's just no fun." He turned his head to the side, his fleshy cheeks instantly forming a bond with the frozen water beneath him. He imagined himself getting to his feet but unable for the fact that his face had been frozen to the ground. He choked out one low chuckle that dissolved quickly into the air. Across from him, standing in the doorway, he spotted one of his clowns, unmasked, eyeing him as if wondering what he should do.

The Joker felt powerful even as he lay on the ground, watching his minion's expression flit mercilessly around in humanity. He exhaled, making a hearty puff of smoke appear before his eyes. "Sir, are you—"

"_No_ 'sirs'," he commanded loudly the minute the man spoke. "Do I…do I look like a sir to you? As much as…ah, _endearing _your pet names may be, I would like to humbly request that I remain exempt from them. Tch. 'Sir.' It's almost blasphemy."

"Oh, I—"

"I like 'king', though!" he objected. "Or master, prince, jack…joker…" He ripped his face away from his ice and saw a red stain permanently etched against the glass, unaware of the immense stinging clawing at his face. He pushed himself up and crossed his legs, staring intently at the mark he'd left. He caught sight once more of the nachos and stuffed another handful through his lips. "I like…I like _anything _but sir." He let his head rock back on his neck as he gave his henchman a poisonous stare that made the man nod and turn away to leave for another area. Briefly, he wondered what the stupid boy was doing awake at such an hour.

Then he reminded himself that it didn't matter. Nothing really _mattered _at all. It was what a human brain determined. The value of the word "four" was one, two, three, four carrot sticks. What if four was the way to pronounce the word for five carrot sticks? What then? Would people realize that creating their own definition for things did not help them but instead held them back and gave them a false sense of power?

He allowed his body free reign and tumbled over on his side. He felt at ease, cool and for once, completely, utterly, and entirely empty. It was the most beautiful feeling in the world. Not having to even work his brain to think of what was funny and what somehow, secretly was not… Was it funny that his face was scarred the way it was? Were the manners in which the deeds had happened at all laughable or humorous?

Did it hurt sometimes, their teasing, wild laughter at his boyish face when he walked into the classroom? Did his mother's utter confusion truly make for some joke? Was his father's—his demonic, beast of a father—own monstrous actions against the whole family anything funny?

Hah…of course they were funny.

Fana jumped at the sound of footsteps approaching her, but did not open her eyes in time to see more than a royal purple coattail trailing around the side of her view. Catching a glimpse of the clock once more, she wondered what her captor might have been doing awake at four o'clock in the morning. Without hesitation, she scooted herself forward on the bench, peering into the smallish hallway that led to a black room—he was headed straight for it.

Before he had even reached the room, he peeled off his jacket and let it drop in a heap behind him as he continued forward. Fana did not entirely trust her vision at the moment, as her head was still aching from what must have been a bigger fall than she'd thought. She had to blink when a yellow light clicked on and noticed that the room the Joker had entered was a bathroom. It must have once been the employee bathroom, as she could not imagine a skating rink having only one toilet and one sink. His slimy curls trickled over his squared shoulders. She tried to get a peek at his face through the mirror, but her sight of it was blocked by the back of his head. He remained stationary until he finally combed through his dirty locks with his gloved fingers and tilted his head downward onto his chest.

He looked so desperately sane as he peacefully undid the buttons of his green vest. His hands never fumbled once, perhaps because he was not worrying himself or rushing as so many men did when they clothed themselves. As his hands moved, his eyes followed downward until his fingers were picking at the last of the three buttons. All of this she watched through the mirror, as he was facing opposite her, and her heart was racing as she imagined what his reaction might have been if he saw her leaning purposefully around the corner to see him. He might have thought something…unexpectedly disturbing, and she did not dare to discuss with herself how he might have reacted.

He slid his vest off. He started unbuttoning his hexagon-patterned shirt, and this time, did not watch himself as he went. Without warning, he shook his head, damp hair flopping around his face. _Like a…a puppy_, she remarked to herself, squinting as she tried to read his mind, though she was perfectly aware that there was no chance of that. _An untrained, mad dog. _He didn't wear a belt, she noted distantly, her eyes fighting sleep. She closed them for a brief moment and heard the sound of fabric dropping lightly to the ground. Slowly, she opened her eyes to catch her breath slightly at the sight of a scarred and bruised back hunched over a porcelain sink. There were purple blotches staining his skin and cuts of all sorts across his shoulder blades. His spine protruded, and there was evidence that someone might have tried to slice it out of him at one point. Even from her distance and dim lighting, she could see a thickened scar just beside it that might have been left by whoever had…made him smile.

Running water reached Fana's ears as he turned on the faucet and bent over slightly. For a minute, he remained entirely immobile, seemingly staring at the sink though it did not appear to boast any interesting qualities. Perhaps he was simply waiting for the water to change temperature, else he must have been lost in thought.

He started speaking. His tone of voice was too low for Fana to catch what he was saying until he ended a sentence with, "…just kill…the Joker." He placed his hand in his pocket, using the other to splash water on his face. It was then that he finally raised his face to the mirror, and Fana could see his beige skin beginning to appear beneath the disappearing white smudges. The red, painted smile had begun to droop, looking heartily more like a frown than a smile. The black of his eyes had dripped down his cheekbones and he looked utterly sad. It was the sort of complete change that made her feel somewhat off balance.

And then his eyes came to rest on her contemplative face in the mirror. He grinned and shook his head again, with a breathy laugh. He turned round and started out the doorway towards her, leaving the water running into the bowl of the sink. Fana felt unable to move, not even to blink. Her heart was racing fearfully as she wondered if he was angry. His hand was no longer in his pockets. He held nothing as he walked slowly towards her, locking her gaze with an unreadable expression that instilled guilt within Fana's veins. His fingers were waggling as if he were holding something invisible that he was twirling around. His tongue was trailing along his lips and his dripping eyebrows were raised into an expectant expression. He took hold of her shoulder and brought her to her feet, spinning her round in the other direction and gave her a push further away from the bathroom.

There was a bouncing feeling in her organs as he shooed her away and into another room, paint dripping off of his face in an array of colors. She continued to chance discreet glances over her shoulder at him. He was so physically normal that it was odd to see such a figure disturbed. He was not emaciated, yet certainly not muscular. He was thin and youthful looking below the neck. He was an average man, and yet…he was ugly. He was ugly because of his average appearance that masked a hidden monster. She still had that ounce of sympathy that went out to him for the scars, but there was no denying that he was a monster, and though she could not show it, she was afraid. He had promised not to hurt her; it had been repeated to her over time. She was stupidly placing too much faith in him, and her greatest relief was that she could admit to him being a monster.

He shoved her down onto the bench again so that she was lying on her side. He narrowed his eyes at her, perhaps in warning or reminder that he would certainly not refrain from destroying her if she became any sort of problem. Anger welled inside him, though he giggled a bit at his idiotic behavior. But how dare she try to spy on him? What a stupid creature…stupid woman, and it said a lot, seeing as he knew she was less of a…pest than some of the others. _Tweedle-dee, tweedle-dum, _he hummed half-heartedly. _Humans all crack under the pressure of midnight. It's the deadline, the end of a day and night period. Fana, Fana, Fana banana can't take the heat… _"Stay out of the kitchen," he muttered.

_Sick, masochistic monster. _She traced the words in the air with her finger until her eyes fell shut.

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I need reviews; it's brain food... please let me know. PLEASE REVIEW :D


	6. Chapter 5: A Man of His Word

Chapter Five: A Man of His Word

Strawberry: The beginnings of Fana's mystery… Next chapter, a lot of stuff comes out on her end. I just like adding in a lot of the Joker's philosophies x] Ones I make up, of course… Anyway, review, else I shall procrastinate in updating…

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No kind of bird enchanted the deserted, broken down ice rink with any kind of beautiful sound to bring any notice of morning. All the windows were boarded with heavy wooden planks; those that were not had pounds of black tape closing out the light. Therefore, Fana opened her eyes with a gentle sigh, unaware of her surroundings, halfway through the afternoon. There were no alarm clocks, no covers to push off wearily, no mother to endearingly shake her to consciousness—though there had not been much of that in years. _More _than years. The last of any motherly interaction had been in high school. She awakened herself. It was not as though she was not old enough to care for herself. She was plenty mature.

However, she would have much rather have had a motherly figure wake her in the morning than a murderous man in purple and green, smiling at her through a painted face.

"Good morning," he greeted simply, smirking. He was sitting below her on the floor, whereas she could feel her body aching from having slept on a narrow bench that continued to prod at her ribs. "I see you sleep on your stomach." He was twiddling his thumbs calmly in his lap, gazing at her intently as though he were less of a monster and more of an acquaintance. But Fana knew well that he wasn't. "That's supposed to be bad for the digestive system you know…causes excessive sugar intake, bad breath…you know. Unkindly…sorts of things." He let a nasally, "Huh?" slip from his throat before grinningly wildly, exposing his yellow teeth as he got to his feet.

Fana's heart was racing. She had to swallow a gaping wad of saliva to clear her throat, though that as well seemed to have been painfully affected by the wooden bench. Squinting at the clock, she groaned and used her arms as sufficient padding for her head.

"Don't you want any breakfast?" The Joker reappeared in front of the bench, waiting for her reply. He watched her slip into slumber, or attempt to. The way her back moved up and down as she slowly breathed, up and down, up and down… It was melodious and soothing in a way he could not have imagined himself to sleep. The scent of the nachos he'd been eating last night wafted to his senses. His eyelids draped closed, as he happily thought of himself throwing them in the microwave that hardly worked at all. The stench was mortifying in such a satisfying way that he could not wait to place the container of them under Fana's nose and watch her expression change desperately to disgust. _Hah…her insides will sink. _"I made nachos!" he exclaimed, clapping his hand down on her back and giving her a shake. Fana ignored him, having no interest in eating in his presence. It made their relationship seem…too casual. And it was anything but casual. "Come onnnnn…" he whined, squatting down to put his face to her ear. She did not turn to look at him, though the way she twitched and raised her shoulder a bit suggested that she was trying to block him out. He blew up his cheeks with air, suppressing laughter.

He was hissing her name, breathing into her earlobe and sending a shock to her brain with his lightning breath. She found herself pursing her lips as he repeated, "Fana, Fana, Fana, Fana," over and over, countless times of irreplaceable seconds of his rasping voice paining her sleepy ears. She tried her hardest to block him out, but she could only recognize a bigger smile stretching over his face as he spoke. He changed his words to, "Come on, come on…" He said it hastily and impatiently, adding a different feeling to it each time it escaped his scarred lips.

It was then that she was finally struck with just the right amount of fear when she felt a cold blade press lightly against the nape of her neck.

She shut her eyes, sick of them burning with salted tears and the stingy itching of a night's unproductive sleep. Locked in her chest was a plea for help, deliverance from a madman who was holding her captive in an icehouse where she was made to sleep on benches and…

…And was not harmed. He hadn't hurt her. There had been threats, and yet they had been utterly empty. Why was she believing him? Why was she lying there, thinking of all the possible, terrible things that could happen to her there, and still not thinking of leaving, when she would have bet her life's savings that the door was unlocked? Her hair smelled lightly of perfume or fruit, something that had probably lingered from the night before, where she had stood out among the crowd to challenge him. He narrowed his eyes, sensing her brain working frivolously. He exhaled in what might have been a yawn unacknowledged. Heh…finally—_finally_—she was scared! And as well she should have been, he reminded himself. She could not possibly have been a normal human being if she did not quiver at least a bit over the person he was. Any do-goody human would have done that, now wouldn't they?

Then again, perhaps Fana was somehow…on his side. _If_…he was allowed to even call it "his side".

"Come on, little missy," he drawled. Her eyes opened as snake-like slits, their eerie golden glow flashing in the yellow lighting. For a split second, she relinquished all of her fear; he could see it in her eyes. And in that split second, she told him something without words that he did not comprehend until the moment had passed. For that one instant of visual connection, his knife still running along her neck, he really did believe that she was just like him in a hidden, weaker form. _Hm…_ He switched his knife closed and stowed it away again, licking his lips several times before turning his attentions to the grungy walls around him. "I'm gonna have to teach you a few things," he said distantly. She had not removed her eyes from him. "I can see who you can be. You can be an Ace, a Queen, a Duchess. You can be something…something important. You have that power." He stood, getting a hold of her under the arms and dragging her up against her will. "You just need for someone to teach you a little somethin' about all that."

She felt frozen, even though she had finally stood. He called for her attention several more times, but she blocked him out. She tried to be discreet as her eyes flitted towards the doorway. He was going to hurt her after all. Just not the way she had expected him to. He had simply hinted that he was going to change her. She could not have guessed what he meant by her need to be taught, but she could bank on the fact that he was most-likely going to force it upon her, and it was going to be something evil.

Just like him.

"_Come on!_" he finally shouted, his voice raising to an extend that caused his voice to sound ancient. She jumped as though she were a child, feeling instantly ashamed, and was pulled into confusion as he led her into the food court, where a sickening smell was toying around with the air. In a rush, every memory of his angled face turning in the mirror as he caught sight of her the night before flew to her mind. She could see his pit-like eyes staring, watching, on the hunt for blood and disaster constantly. The red dripping down his face demonically as he casually undressed himself symbolized how much a monster he was. And yet, he still undressed as humanly as anyone. He was a man.

His fingernails were digging into her forearm. She might have yelped, but her head was spinning as she wondered what was causing her to make up such excuses for him and try to see the humanity behind his behavior. Perhaps he had been implying that he could change her into some form of life that resembled what he was. Perhaps he had been right that there was an uncanny potential for that to happen, and it frightened her. Her blatant attempts at studying and understanding him were signs, were they not?

"You're a man," she found herself saying quietly as he pulled her roughly along. He only laughed as a child would and threw her into a chair facing a red and yellow rounded table. Crossing to the other side of the room with a purpose, he reached the counter and slung something white around his neck. Fana did not notice what it was until he turned, carrying a container of something sickening looking. An apron reading, "Kiss the Cook", was draped across his torso, and he walked towards her with a sly smile of pleasure plastered on his face. There was almost a skip to his step. He did not stop moving when he reached the table, instead ramming his abdomen into it with such force that she could not believe he barely cringed at all. The box of smelly food slid into her across the table, and he leaned expectantly into her presence, watching intently.

"I am a man," he responded lately. She tried to look at him securely, but could not help but squint a bit at the hellacious smell of what looked to have been molded nachos. Her lip curled in disgust, but in the back of her mind, she wondered more if he had poisoned them.

It wouldn't have been the first time someone had tried. _"You tried to poison me," she said. _

"_There was no other way to destroy suffering," her tearful father answered._

She ignored her memories determinedly. "You are a woman," he added slowly and mockingly, perhaps in attempt to poke fun at her. "Try some! I worked so very hard…on them…my heart would be crushed if I couldn't have simply a good opinion of them." His lips seemed to stretch further across his face, having nothing to do with the paint. Fana shut her eyes momentarily, doing her best to breathe only through her mouth without making her disgust too terribly obvious. Pressing her lips together, she carefully plucked one of the chips away from the hardened mess that was the age-old, bluing cheese. Her stomach twisted slightly, but she came to her senses soon enough, knowing well that the world could not be too fearful. If anyone was too careful, they became dominated by it. She didn't trust herself nearly enough to allow herself any fear at all, lest it seep into her veins with permanence and overtake with ease.

"What's your name?" He raised his eyebrows, somewhat impressed that she had even bothered with trying to discover him. _Character_, he thought to himself. _She's not only concerned about herself. In fact…_

"I don't have one," he answered casually.

"I know you do," she retorted snappishly. He opened his mouth to say, "Only if you eat breakfast," but before he had the chance, she had tossed one into her mouth, screwing up her face and shutting her eyes as if she had never imagined something being so foul.

He smiled. "No, really. I don't. No other alias…" He picked up one of the chips from in front of her and crunched down on it. "I don't believe in the past. Or the future for that matter. There is…nothing else but the present, because all it does is _become _the past and future. If it can become both time periods, then it can be all three, therefore, there's no point to the other two. A name is part of a past in a world where present dominates. In a world…" He trailed off, his taste buds ferociously raging at what they were being fed. Fana ate another chip; they went back and forth, in a pattern they did not name but understood.

"How old are you?" she asked. He broke the pattern to take an extra heap of the nachos in order to fill his mouth to the brim.

"Four thousand, seven-hundred and twelve," he answered truthfully. "In a world where numbers are never lies, since they are only names."

"Who are you?"

He slowed the mechanics of his brain and chewed gently. "As much as a no one…or someone…as anyone else in this world."

She hated to admit it, even non-verbally, but there was something about his views that was…logical. She watched his cheekbones move as he chewed: humanity was itching to escape him, and leaked out on several occasions. She watched him use his fifth finger to push a greasy strand of hair away from his forehead: knowledge of discomfort. She watched his eyes trail from his hand to the food to nothing at all when he put something into his mouth: senses. "Human…" she said under her breath. She was aware that he had heard her, but he made no recognition. "You're just…" She barely wanted to hear it escape her own, conclusive mouth.

"I'm just like you," he finished for her with darkness consuming his face. He sat there, knowing that she could have been someone who would identify with him. The amount of empathy he had for her confusion—something he hadn't felt in a while, but had indeed, been felt long ago—made him double-take at his own mind and try to find some kind of comedy in what he felt. All he could think was that his sentence was interchangeable: He was just like her, but at the same time, she was just like him.

It was a bad joke.

"Who are you?" he asked, mirroring her own question.

She shifted her weight, debating whether to answer. Once she decided there was no harm, it took another set of minutes to attempt to understand herself at all. "I'm young. I have no future. I work in the restaurant business."

"Your parents?"

"They're part of the past in a world where the present dominates." He smiled.

"Husband?"

"There's no one to rely on."

_Just like me._ He chewed.

Neither of them spoke as she understood that they were to stand. He emptily exited the court and traveled to the door to the icehouse. She squinted momentarily, then transferred her position to the wooden bench she had been sleeping on. She felt belittled, or little in general, as she sat there, lone on a long line of benches that were not being used. Around the door, he was removing the apron, fumbling with the tie in the back. After he had collected himself, he reached in his coat's pocket and extracted a pair of gloves. Sliding them over each of his hands, he sniffed a bit, as if to say that they had never come close to identifying with one another. He knew that she feared being like him; part of him didn't blame her, and that was the same part that he feared being. It resembled her. In less than a day's time, was it possible that they had let their personalities bleed into each others in such a way?

"We're going on a conquest," he told her as simply as if he were inviting her to the movies on a Sunday afternoon. Fana knew all too well that it most nearly would be some kind of villainous conquest. Vaguely, she wondered if there was any sort of television in the area so that she might discover his plans through the news. But it was of no importance. "I would invite you…ooh, I hate to be rude…but someone might want to ruin our little plan if they see you around." Several of his henchmen appeared at his sides without even a word spoken by him. "You don't want to run anywhere," he said convincingly, as though he had any right to speak for her. "They want you to. But you don't _need _that kind of hollow escape. What does it mean to run if the present rolls forward and you can remember what it once was?"

After those words, his gloved hand curled around the handle. "Lemme tell you what I think." He noticed Fana setting her jaw determinedly as though she were trying to prove herself to him. _Ha. What's to prove? _he thought devilishly. "I think…you're just scared of everybody." He wanted to embrace her when that heavy glee shot up from his toes at the sight of her fearful eyes. "Ah, seems I know a few things about you, yeah?" he instigated. She made no sign of any reply accept for the slight bobbing of her neck to suggest she might have swallowed in nervousness. "Being scared of…people…it's—it's just a waste of time," he explained. "What are they gonna do to you, y'know? I mean…" He scoffed. "People are weak-kuh. You're scared of me, but that's because you're smart, and you've figured out that I'm not your average man…hahaha…not…average…at all. However…look at me. However, you're scared of me like you'd be scared of a person. But listen, doll face, I'm not a person. I'm above that. When I give you my word, I mean it." Her eyes were glistening. "Stop sitting on the edge of that little—" he pointed "—bench all petrified-like. I said…I wasn't going to hurt you. I said you weren't a roadblock. You're not. I don't need to. Unless you keep going in this little…downward _spiral_, you get to keep your face. But if you keep going down…eventually, you're gonna think about trying to…escape, and you know something? The strugglers are the funniest to do away with. But look, listen. I gave you my word, missy-moo. And you know something else?" He patted his chest descriptively and then proceeded to fling his arm to the side impressively as if he were a ringmaster. "I'm a man of my word. Trust them all, if only to laugh when they betray you. Stupidity is humor."

He threw the door open, tossing his head behind him with laughter. His greenish hair brushed his shoulders and the back of his purple suit folded messily; naturally he would never iron it. He closed the door again and Fana detected no sound or view of him twisting the lock shut. Suspiciously, she checked in the perimeter of her vision for any of the clown-masked followers that might have been lurking to make sure she would not be able to escape. There did not seem to be anyone around.

She did not get up to leave the entire day, and the Joker did not return until evening had come.

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Review, or I'll torture you with no updates forever and ever and you'll feel empty inside xD


	7. Chapter 6: Civil Awareness

Chapter Six: Civil Awareness

Strawberry: And her story begins…

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"I'm sorry…" she muttered. He sat casually on a bench across from her, staring at her through harshly lit room that might have stained his skin. She had already tossed herself over once on her sleeping surface; he was flipping over a playing card in his hand as if betting that she would fall off at any moment, crashing to a startled wake. He briefly considered what he would do when she came to and saw him doing nothing but watching her. It was only barely into the evening then—only eight o'clock. But she had dozed, perhaps for lack of anything better to do. He had only just returned a few minutes ago. He was pleased with himself as he thought of how well the day had gone.

He had left shortly after waking Fana and planted rigged drums in the basement of Arkham Asylum. He stood outside when he had finished, holding the detonator threateningly in his hand when the guards flooded out of the building, some frantic, and some trying to reason. "What do you want?" one of them finally asked.

"Me?" he had said mockingly. "I want…" He had lifted a sheet of paper to his face to read the names off of the list. "Randy Pierce, Langston Waters, Charlie Fetter, Thomas Schiff, and Mark Edinburgh." He had known them all to have been especially troubled. He also knew himself to be especially troubled, and considered himself well able to identify with them with pleasure. "Hand 'em over to me, and I won't blow this place to smithereens." One by one, the five men were carted out, shackled, one in a wheel chair. "Bondage…no, no, no, give me the keys, or you haven't done any good at all." He was tossed a full ring of keys, much to the protest of the other guards. He smiled appreciatively. "Thank you, good citizens…" he hissed, instructing each of his men to grab a patient and stuff them in the bus. He had twirled the ring of keys around his fingers, feeling successful.

He remarked at his plan. He had captured these men in particular, because he always loved having someone think they were finally understood. He almost felt noble, as if he were relieving their suffering by extracting them from the walls of the prison. Those men had probably not done anything but be victims of an accident of birth or some sort of defect. Did they deserve to be locked away?

Well, it was nothing short of what they still were. He vaguely pondered how it was going on the second floor for his cronies as they held down the men they'd captured. Were they already promising that they would be set free as long as they participated in a plan? If they were, as scheduled, he would have perfect opportunity to go in later on and convince them that they could use the idea to get back at the society that had punished them for their downfalls.

They would be killing the mayor soon enough at a ceremony three days from then.

"Mom, that's not…" She was mumbling again. He now gave her his undivided attention. Vaguely, he recognized a familiar habit mirrored in her own jaw as she stretched and contorted it with the emotion of whatever she was dreaming of. "That's not true, I wouldn't…of course I would help you…" He grinned. He nearly offered her sympathy, but he did not truly care at all. It was simply humorous the way she was letting her heart do all the talking. _That's a mistake…_ he sung in his thoughts. He laughed as she twitched slightly, now muttering so quietly that it was inaudible.

"What?" he taunted, cupping his hand around his ear. "Can't hear you, Fana banana—speak up! Why don'tcha…" He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He narrowed his eyes. She had gone completely silent, rather than raise her voice any. He watched.

"_Dad, Mom's in an accident, we have to go find her!" Fana was grabbing her coat from the hanger, collecting her cell phone and frantically running her hands along the kitchen counter, picking up water, Band-Aids, rubbing alcohol. She knew she couldn't do much, but it was all she could do to prove to her mother that she did care. Of course she cared…_

_It was her mother who didn't care._

"_She hates you," her father said. She shrugged off the words, continuing to move quickly. _

"_I don't care if she hates me. That's my mom, you—what the hell are you _doing, _Dad? Hurry up, we've gotta go, she's just on the other street! Prince Hall street, it's right across from our house, _please _move!" Briefly, she took note of the tears that were welling in his eyes. She hated him. She hated everyone because everyone hated her. He was trying to kill her mother, she could tell. Everything he had done was to hurt Fana. And every time she called him out on it, he would only say, "You think everything's about you, don't you?"_

_She ran to the door. "I'll go without you, you sick bastard," she snarled, ripping the door open and tearing out into the driveway. She could hear him behind her, screaming her name maliciously. She ignored him, focusing on only trying to see past the torrential swirls of snow that clouded her vision. Her eyes could barely keep open, the slick cold air burning them and freezing the liquid swimming in them. She otherwise would have been very careful of slipping on ice, but given the situation, she had no time._

_She looked behind her, frantically sliding her arms into the sleeves of her jacket. With a start, she saw her father chasing after her, howling and barking threats to her that she regarded as hollow. Something glistened in his hand. _

_He was faster, and she was afraid._

_In her frantic movement, her foot slid on the ice and sent her hurtling to the ground with a frozen gasp. She hit her head. In no time, her father had caught up with her and was dragging her by the shoulders back up the driveway and through the door in the garage. A knife was pressed to her neck._

_Fana started crying. "She's gonna die!" she said hoarsely, desperately looking out at the commotion in the street ahead. Something had caught fire. "Please, just let me help her!"_

"_Don't pretend you care." Hot liquid trickled down her neck. He had pushed the blade as a slice into her neck. "You're an ingrate. All you care about is yourself. And look at you. You're killing her as we speak."_

_There was a scream. It was her mother's scream. She struggled, but he only dug the knife in further. "Murderer," he whispered in her ear._

She woke with a jump, feeling the blow of a short fall thud against her back. She groaned and looked above her head to see that she had rolled off of the bench she had fallen asleep on. Startled by her fall, he stood defensively, as if he might have expected her to pull a gun on him, though he knew all too well that it would have been a treat if she had. Fana tried to catch her breath, staring at the metal ceiling with bug-filtered light covers glowing down on her with an olive tint. "God," she said, smacking her hands over her eyes and removing herself completely from her unearthly slumber. He was intent upon her, still staring fixedly at her dumbstruck figure lying stupidly on the ground. He wondered shortly what she would say when it was discovered that he had clearly been watching and listening to her sleep gibberish.

"Nightmare?" Fana forced her eyes open and turned her head, holding her hands above her face to see. The Joker was standing there amongst the line of benches, eyeing her as if he had been a significant part of her dream, walking in the world with her. _My angelic mother…was always a little…different. _She could remember well the story he'd told her of his mother. She dared not compare the two of them; she shunned any ounce of similarity they may have bore to one another. She exhaled deeply and turned her face to the ceiling again when he did not continue speaking.

"I hate sleeping," she said in a mellow tone. He gnawed at his lips from the inside of his mouth, stretching them once he had caught her words properly. "I hate sleeping because I hate dreaming. You know that?" He was unsure of why she was bothering to speak to him at all. He distantly offered his attention, but dimmed it out to make sure she knew that he hardly cared about whatever minuscule hardships she suffered. If she couldn't learn to laugh, he couldn't learn to give her any sympathy whatsoever.

He had no sympathy for such imbeciles.

"I hate sleeping, too," he answered her, having stirred up such a beautiful creation that she would be lost for words. She did not acknowledge his response. "You know how…well, listen. The human mind produces seven to eight dreams a night. They only last a matter of seconds. And during those dreams…you live through your dream body. And you're aware of yourself just like you're aware of yourself when you're awake." He took to pacing, smiling peacefully to himself at how brilliantly funny, pointless, idiotic the human brain was. "If you dream eight dreams," he concluded, snapping his gloved fingers, "the most time you can spend with your head in a…dream world…is only a minute…and twenty-one seconds." He tilted his head to the side to crack his neck. He was unsuccessful. She was still not watching him, obviously meditating over the dream that had caused her to address her mother. "You sleep a lot longer than that, don't you?" He edged his face into a sly expression. "So what do you think you're aware of when you aren't aware of yourself being physically in a bed, and you're not aware of yourself…doing your little…dream ballets?" He started out of the area, towards the food court to pick up a bottle of water. "You're not aware of yourself at all." His steps echoed in Fana's ears. "Makes you feel empty and helpless, not being aware of yourself…doesn't it?"

He could tell without looking at her that he had done a fantastic job of toying with her mind. He loved it.

"Tell me something…"

He stood still, his weight unevenly balanced on his two feet, one positioned ahead of him and the other behind. His knees were slightly bent. It made him feel off balance. _Little too human for my liking_, he thought, standing himself up properly again. Once he had, he waited, almost impatiently, for her to pick up speaking where she left off. "Tell me something I don't know," she went on. With a slight puff, he rested his right shoulder against the doorway, crossing his right leg over his left.

"Gimme an example," he grumbled. She could not see him from where she lay. She wondered vaguely where he had gone, but spared herself the concern since he was, at the very least, responding.

"Just anything. Tell me something you'd want to tell me."

He thought for a minute. Briefly, he thought to ask her what was bringing on her sudden interest in whatever he had to say, but he decided against it, reminding himself that it was of no importance. "For Christmas, I'd like gunpowder." She made no reply or supposed movement.

"Why do you have me here?" she said at last. "I don't want to know about why you chose an icehouse. You probably did it because it's summer and it'll be cold in here regardless of air-conditioning, but that's just a thought. I want to know what…what are you planning? What use am I?" He directed his attentions to his deep purple dress shoes. He thought briefly, wondering why, seeing as he knew well what his reasons for keeping her were. He wanted to talk to Harvey. He _believed _in Harvey Dent. _Haha…clever… _Harvey was the ace in the hole, of course. If he could corrupt Dent—and he could; everyone could be corrupted, and he had living proof—then Gotham's spirit would completely break. Who would be their White Knight? Once they were shown that everyone could turn into a monster, they'd lose their only wills to live. Fana was just the bait. Why was she making it more complicated than it was?

Why was he considering it at all?

"I _told_ you…" He sucked on the scar on the right side of his face. It stung with the sharpness of pins and needles, as if it were still healing, still ready to start bleeding again if it was hit the wrong way. "You really do need to start _listening _a little…just a little. You know, I'd think that…if I were you…in your position…" She sat up, dejected. "I'd listen when my…cap-tor made any comments. See, that way, I'd know what to expect and wouldn't have to ask so many questions…" He walked ahead to the counter that bore evidence of an aged register where orders were taken. He leaned out of the concession window and peered down at her. She noticed instantly. Their eyes were in perfect connection for a good seven seconds, he counted; before he started speaking again. "You're the _bait_," he told her. "I want to see some 'law-abiding' Gotham citizen…" He lifted his hands as if on the surface of a high shelf. "…turn on the whole city and bring me Harvey Dent." He brought his hands down to show a change in level. "Killing…it's making a choice. Someone out there would rather Harvey die than little miss Fana banana. Someone…will go to any lengths to kill Harvey to make sure you're out of harm's way."

Her eyes narrowed at him. He leaned his arms on the window and stared back at her, making sure she knew that he was boss. _He _alone was in control, the prince of the city…he could manipulate anyone because he knew that no one was incorruptible. If a person was pushed far enough…boom. There went their sanity.

He was the truest opposite of therapists.

"Don't count on it."

It was his turn to narrow his eyes. "I'm sorry?"

"You picked the wrong person," she said bitterly. "No one wants to save me. You won't be seeing Harvey anytime soon."

_She IS a tragedy_, he thought with a grin. _Listen to her wade in depression…_ He laughed. "Are you tellin' me that I would've been better off…with Rachel?" he taunted, knowing well she might have taken it to heart. When she did not answer, he continued. "Well, I don't know about that. I'm satisfied with my choice. See, I don't know if I could promise _her _safety. You're a little bit different."

Her ears perked. "Why?" she asked him. "Why don't you want to hurt me? Why did you say that?"

He scoffed. "Now what's the point of a secret if you don't keep it?" he chanted, heartily exiting the food court, calling after her. She traipsed to the hallway, but he was out of sight before she had even gotten to her feet. He started up the stairs to the second floor where he would have to give instructions. Excitement welled inside him. _She's losing it_, he observed. _It's only a matter of time._


	8. Chapter 7: Murderous Behavior

Chapter Seven: Murderous Behavior

Strawberry: This chapter reminds me of the way I'm kind of…twisted, if you will. It reminds me of why I don't like the way my brain works. If I can write it down, means I've thought of it, right? Eh…I still like this chapter for the most part. Actually, I REALLY like it. I've read it like forty times x] My excuse is "proofreading". But I really like it.

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A man in the corner was rocking back and forth, hugging his knees against his chest, his chin trembling. That was Charlie. Langston had tears pouring down his cheeks and his tied wrists shook with his dry sobs. Then there was Mark. He was the only one throwing a fit, screaming that he had to get back to his home. He did his best to deliver blows, but ended up hurting himself in the long wrong, tripping over his own jelly-like legs as his men held him down. Thomas Schiff looked silently eager, perhaps only for a release or for some kind of comfort. Randy was the only one fully cooperating as if he had always been a part of the organization, always been longing to be a criminal, always been wanting the thrill he was achieving. He was sitting with his feet stretched in front of his, swaying them back and forth. He was twirling his thumbs around each other and smirking idly at the commotion throughout the room.

When he entered, Mark gave a high-pitched plea for deliverance. "Sir, what should I—"

"Mr. Mark-kuh," he said, interrupting his servant. Mark froze, panting wildly as a rabid dog. "Let's me and you have a friendly talk. Come on, sit down. I want you to think about something for me. All of you. Think about…who you are. Uh…you, Schiff." Thomas turned his attentions on him. "Tell me why…you were locked up in Arkham Asylum. Hm?" Thomas looked instantly taken aback, perhaps offended at being asked. Or offended, rather, that he had been "locked up" in the first place. He was already making progress, he noted.

"Well—heeh, I…" Thomas swallowed. "I-I don't know, I never…"

"They never _told _you?" He plastered a look of mock concern over his face.

"M-Mom and Dad s-said I had a…a problem. So they…they l-eft me there."

"They left you." He gave Thomas a moment to think and accept that he had been abandoned by his family. "They left you, hm?" Thomas nodded, his teeth chattering, but his eyes welling with rage. "What did they tell you about that?"

"I—I couldn't ha-handle the world this way," Thomas answered. With a pleased grin, he noticed the man curl his fists. "I'm…d-different."

"Oh, you are. You're different. You wanna know how? You're…_better_ than your parents. Better than all of those…people. And you know why they put you away like that?" Thomas shook his head. "They were scared of you. Not because you 'weren't ready for the world'. They were scared because you were more ready than them. They were the odd guys out. See, humans are simple. They want to live in a world where they…can be…the best. Lemme tell you what they look for…" He shooed one of his sweating green locks away from his face. "They look for the _threat_. They look for the people who are _better_." He nodded encouragingly. "You're ready for the world. What do you say…you show this world that you're more ready than they are?"

He had captivated the entire room. He could feel them all silently acknowledging in their minds that his reasoning must have been true. He knew that they all wanted to hear that they were above the rest instead of what they usually heard. "Now listen," he began, keeping a special watch on Mark Edinburgh. "I can show you _exactly_ how to prove yourselves. _Every…_single one…of you." He pointed at each of them individually, watching the way their eyes lit up. "The mayor." Two of them leaned forward expectantly. "Kill…the mayor."

Four of them smiled. Randy was the sanest. He still glowered from under his brow, accepting the task but now approving.

He smiled with them. After all, he only needed four extra men to finish the job. With his crew, plus those four—perhaps five depending on how Randy determined—he would have twelve men to impersonate the academy members he had arranged to be kidnapped. It was all going as planned. Then again, even if it didn't, things would still be beautiful.

Her lip was bleeding.

Slowing her breathing as necessarily as she could do so, she pressed her fingers to her mouth and dabbed at the broken skin. She was not sure what had started it; perhaps she had bitten it when she was asleep and dreaming. Perhaps it was in fact because the air was dry and cold enough to split skin. Whatever the reason, it was of no consequence. She could taste blood. Her legs were tangled underneath her sloppily.

"You're looking a l_itt_le gloomy." The moment she looked up, he was towering above her, standing right in front of her. Fana felt guiltily submissive as she was curled on the ground at his feet, as though at his mercy or in his service. Before saying anything else, he felt compelled to sit along with her, seeing as she was looking much too pathetic sitting on her own. They were paralleling one another. His fingers were clicking against themselves silently. "It's a _sunny _day, doll face," he went on absent-mindedly, smiling to himself as he looked off towards one of the boarded windows. "And I hate to see a frown on such a pretty day!" There was a rusty tinge to his voice. His yellowed teeth were bared in a grin.

"The sun would be setting by now," Fana said quietly. She bowed her head, feeling as though the sundown was the mark of the beginning of the end of her life.

"And does that make it any less sunny?" he proposed, offering a substantial argument. Fana shrugged, not up for debate. Licking his lips momentarily when he noticed a tiny welling of blood around her lip, he leaned in slightly closer to her and rolled his eyes. It was such a task, dealing with humans. Anything dealing with two people of different levels of intellect was too much of a task. He sighed. "Talk to me. I need a laugh."

She looked at him, stunned, eager to know why he was meaning to ask her to talk to him. Did he want her to vent? And if he did, what was the point of it all? He didn't care. "Talk to you?" she repeated. "Talk to you about what? The sunset?"

"If it floats your boat," he shrugged. "Roll with it."

She blinked several times until she was certain that her eyelashes would get stuck together if she tried once more. One of his knees was elevated, his other leg stretched out lazily to the side carelessly. His gaze was hardly at all interested in her, and more portrayed the persona of a man completely empty. _No other alias_, she thought deeply. No other alias was correct. The Joker was one simple madman, perhaps with a back-story and perhaps without. Either way he was simply himself and had no other identity; she agreed with him about that, even if he had never said it. After all, he was easier to deal with if she could just make up excuses for him. "The sunset is…" She rattled her brain, shaking it free of all the things she wished to avoid. She tried to focus only on what exactly the sunset _was_. Did she know? Did she really even care about the sunset when there were so many more important things to care about? "The sunset…it's…"

"Mmm…hmm?" he prodded, barely even feigning his interest.

"I…" She felt inhuman for just a brief moment. Without a doubt, he had noticed. As if reading her mind, his mouth curved against the scars and the greasepaint. "I'm a murderer."

His smile flickered, than grew. "Ah, playing the common interests card…" he said, reaching in his pocket. When he removed his hand, a card with a yellow jester was between his fingers. He tossed in on the ground between them; it landed face down. "What a co—_win_cidence. I'm a murderer, too." He leaned over, his back hunching over his hips. He placed his middle finger on the back of the card lying on the tile floor. Absently, he slid it around in a figure eight, ignoring Fana, though her words were circulating in his mind. "Are you _really_ a murderer, Miss Fana? Or are you just yankin' my chain..?"

"It's not funny," she snapped. She hadn't been angry—not this angry—in a while.

"Oh, yes, it is," he chanted back. "It's always funny. Even if you'd like to say it isn't, the world…it's just a game. What happens here stays here when we die. And overall…there's just no point to it. We'll be fossils here, soon enough. It's selfish to bawl over yourself…selfish to say, 'I had to live with that all my life.' Hey, you did it! And you hurt somebody else. Why are you making yourself the victim? _That's _not funny. But if you turn it just a _little _bit to the side…" He spun the card counterclockwise. "…It's funny that even in selflessness, human beings are…selfish…"

"As _you_ take the credit for analyzing everything," she said bitterly.

"Am I a human being?" he replied, raising his eyebrows.

"Hardly."

"Then I take the credit…blamelessly." He reached up and tapped her face with the palm of his hand. "You're still not _talking_ enough. Keep talking. Nothing's on TV." When she didn't respond, he sighed submissively and said, "Tell me why you're a murderer. You want to. Better if you don't deprive yourself…" He almost sounded sincere but she was hardly inclined to put any faith in him whatsoever.

"My parents were hardly out of high school when…when I came along," Fana began. He narrowed his eyes. _How I love a good back-story…_ he thought. _And how I can't stand loving things. _"I guess they were both a little messed up. You'd think someone would've wondered why they were so drawn to each other and no one else would give them the time of day. Dad was some kind of mental mess. He cried at least twice a day over something miniscule. He might have been depressed. And my mother was…"

He held out his hand. She made no movement to pick up into her possession the pocketknife he was offering her. "Take it," he said warningly. "Can't trust myself right now…" He forced it into her hand, giving no further explanation.

It wasn't cold as she expected it to have been. In fact, it was loitering around lukewarm. It seemed to instill a feeling of superiority in her as she sat there, knife in hand, in front of the Joker, whom was unarmed. All along he had seemed to have been providing her with sufficient means of power—enough to get her out of the place. Out of captivity, out of danger…

She flipped the blade up. His eyes widened hungrily. Fana pursed her lips, suddenly considering holding it to his neck and forcing him to find someone else to hold captive. But what good would it have done? There was no point, seeing as she had hardly been trying to escape at all. Maybe she didn't even want to.

Desire was burning in his chest cavity. He transferred his weight to his knees and moved forward, very slowly, almost with no progress all. He was crawling—positively _crawling_ towards the blade. "Do it," he hissed. Fana's eyes darted to the side, dropping her arms to her side, doing her best to pretend she had not even considered what she now knew he wanted her to do. "Come on," he whispered, still inching closer to her, his eyes fixed on the shining blade. "Come on…I want you to do it. I want you to do it, I _want _you to…" His heart was racing. _Hurt me…_

He reached for her hand. She seemed in a trance, not even resisting when his gloved hands wrapped around the fingers that she had curled around the handle of the knife. He dipped his head down, shaking his head once to calm himself. He guided her hand to his mouth until the slick blade was pressing into the corner of his lip. The scars were searing, just at the familiar feeling. "Tell me the story," he growled, his mouth closing on the knife. "Show me what it feels like." Fana's eyes were wide, but in the back of her mind, she knew better than to disobey. She didn't have to hurt him. Even in the end, it may have been better that he know how it felt when he shoved his blade in some victim's mouth and spat a story into their face. It would have been better if he knew.

Undecidedly, she lightly cupped her hand around the side of his neck, just below his ear. He grinned wildly. She adjusted her hand on the handle, her fingers feeling awkward around it, half-wishing he had never taken it out at all. "My mom…hated everything," she said uncomfortably, almost drawing her hands back. "I was at the top of that list…" He moved forward, and Fana instinctively pulled her hands further from him so as not to cut him. She did pity him. In his case, the last thing she wanted was to push him further over the edge of insanity. "She, uh…sh-she wanted me to go away." She was shrinking under his hungry gaze. "Both she and Dad always…always pretended I was doing something to make them annoyed with me. So when Mom left, the excuse was that I was never happy enough." He was turning his head dangerously to the side, his mouth pulling against the knife she was holding. He never broke his stare. She adjusted it, shaking. "She got in an accident…when she…decided to come home. I was…trying to go help her, but my dad kept pulling me back…so I couldn't. So…she died, when the gas caught fire." His face was mere centimeters from hers now, their noses quietly brushing against the other. She knew the white paint to be smearing onto her face.

He was breathing in all the air available to her. He was still fighting to get the knife to puncture him, but she would not have it. She felt slightly dizzy having him so close to her. He was moving around, fidgeting with the floor around her legs. She shut her eyes, giving up on stealing the oxygen back from him. Her brow was knitting together, and she gulped, making her throat ache.

"Are you going to finish the story?" he murmured. When she opened one eye to look at him, she noticed that he had let his fall shut as well. He looked peaceful, and perfectly in place with her poking a knife at him. "I wanna hear the rest…" He jerked his head to the side and his cheek brushed against hers as he tried to force her into slicing his face.

"Uh…" She drew her hand away from his neck and felt around for the ground behind her, holding herself steady. "He…um…he…"

"He called you a murderer," he finished grimly for her. Their foreheads came in contact for a moment before he leaned into the knife again. "Let me be the outlet. You wanted to kill him. They _destroyed _you…" She looked up at the ceiling, frantically trying to escape the sight of him desperately begging for her to reprint the scars around his mouth. "Do it to me. Do what you want…it's easy…I'll help you do it, I want you to…" His eyes opened slowly. "Make me pay for the pain I've caused."

Before he was aware of anything, she had ripped the knife out of his mouth and tossed it behind her. His spirits fell, but he knew she had done it because she was trying to avoid doing what she could not deny wanting to do. And as he thought it, she had gotten him into some sort of…headlock? He could not determine what; all he knew was that the side of his face was plastered against her collarbone. She was breathing in the foul scent of his dingy hair. She didn't much care. It was the least she should have suffered for what she had been so close to doing…

"You're…" He was propped against her legs. "…not good at telling stories." She ignored him. "I can hear your heart beating. You sound like a schizophrenic."

"You can't trust people," she said, mirroring his teachings.

"I know that," he replied. He could hear the pensiveness in her voice, but did not bother to trouble himself with discovering her thoughts. Although…she was an awful lot of…stuff. "Hey…_hey_, I'm mad at you," he said, feeling too…normal to stay silent. He escaped her grasp and immediately she drew her legs up to her chin. He turned with his back to her in mock offense. "I told you…to give me a kick in the face. I see you…don't have enough guts to do it. Little-bitty girl…no one else is gonna show you any mercy. If you do, you'll be stepping into that space at the bottom of the food chain. Not very smart of you…" He crossed his arms. Peering once over his shoulder, he leaned back against her legs. "You dwell on the past. Don't be a weakling." He laughed. "Be a little…murderous…"

She muttered something as she stared into the back of his head. "What was that?" he asked. Fana rested her head on her knees.

"You wouldn't hate yourself so much if you'd just change a little," she said quietly.

He couldn't make his legs work for the next twenty minutes.


	9. Chapter 8: The Scars

Chapter Eight: The Scars

Strawberry: As this chapter is being written while I watch Casanova… Heath Ledger is especially appealing in this one ^_^ Anyway, this chapter is more routinely about the makeup and his character. It's very short. I think the end is kinda cute, judging by how far along the character development is…Hope you enjoy! Oh, and a huge thank you to everyone who added this story to their Favorites! I think…I think I love you guys! xD

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The following day passed and was only mildly productive. He had gotten done everything that needed to get done, but they were all little things, such as having a nameplate made for a uniform. "Officer Rachel Dawes", it read. After the mayor, after Dent, it was Rachel's turn. He marveled at how fantastic his entire plan was. He had assigned twelve of the thirteen men he'd acquired to the task. What a show…

That day, Fana had taken to moving around, fending for herself. If she had done so two days ago, when he'd first taken her, he wouldn't have found himself watching the door so feverishly.

She was still, of course, wearing the dress she had worn to that…reception of Mr. Dent's. It was slick and fitted around her little waist. It was the color of the night sky under the moon's glow—a gentle, opaque blue. With such a dress, he would have expected some rendition of fancy heels in gold. But she had gone to the party in flat, black-fabric shoes that made her whole appearance look…

Different.

Fana was roaming through the refrigerator shelves in the food court, looking into the door of it. He strolled to the doorway of the entrance and took up rubbing his thumb and middle finger together to make dull snapping noises. He could tell that she noticed; but she continued to scan the shelves, quite obviously hungry. "You went to the grocery story, I see," she said, tapping her fingers against the door handle.

"_I _went to the grocery store?" he said, pointing to himself. She still did not look in his direction. "No…_they _went to the grocery store." She had begun taking things off of the shelves. First there was a tin-wrapped block of cheese followed by a cardboard box with curled noodles inside of it. He watched her lay eyes on the plastic silverware with quiet interest. She ran a plastic dish under the shoddy faucet of the sink until it was filled to the brim with water. Setting it aside, she ripped open the seal of the cardboard box of noodles and dumped several of them inside the dish of water. She walked to the microwave and opened the door of it, shoving the container inside of it and turning on the heat. Standing still for a moment, she then returned to the counter and carved two hearty squares from the chunk of cheese she had unwrapped. "Why would I go into a grocery store?" he said. He laughed breathily. "_Why _would I go in there and just…"

She looked at him at last. She could see his eyes soften.

"…Ruin everything?"

Fana set down the plastic knife. "When are you going to get tired of running?" she asked, her voice flavored with seriousness. He walked up at her side, smiling at the cabinets that resembled those of a kitchen. He began humming a mellow tune that he was creating off the top of his head.

"Mmm…when pigs fly," he answered simply.

"Honestly."

"When I stop _having _to." She nodded her head defiantly and swerved around him, leaving him staring at the side of the refrigerator. When he turned she had stopped the microwave, though the timer had not gone off. She cupped her hands around the bowl of noodles and water and set it carefully on the counter, steadily so as not to spill. She thrust her finger in the water, biting her lip and swishing the noodles around. He hardly had enough time to recognize how hot it was before she was saying, "Do you _like _having to run?"

He answered that he didn't.

"Then why do you make it so that you have to?" she prodded.

He threw his hands in the air, admiring himself. "Because I'm a _little _crazy."

"Do you want some?" she said, ignoring him. She gestured to the softened noodles swimming around in the cup of water. Blindly, he nodded. Seemingly unaware that he was still standing there, she went about making the food, draining the bowl over the sink. Behind the handles were paper bowls that were crinkled. _They'll have to do_, she thought, slopping in a relatively equal amount of noodles into two of them. Finally, she threw the cheese she had sliced on each pile of them, and said, "Here. The crappiest macaroni you'll ever eat." She shoved it against his chest and plopped herself down at a table in the corner.

"Macaroni…" He followed her footsteps, pulling one of the noodles out from under the slowly melting cheese. "Maroni…Maroni macaroni! Hah…" He slammed down in a chair across from her, pushing his foot against the wall and leaning back. He let the noodle slide down his throat, tickling it slightly and causing him to cough. "I like—"

"Why do you wear that makeup?" He raised his eyebrows. "Do you think you need to?" He considered it. It was something…routine; he'd been doing it for years. Why did he wear the makeup? Well, because it was a part of him, like his eyeballs or his skin. It identified the man he was, the man he would always be. Why _didn't _he wear the makeup? He let his mind trail back to the morning, when he had risen before the sun and trudged into the bathroom wearily. Mornings were when he felt the most human; he went to bed late and woke early. The most sleep he ever got must have been five hours, _if _he was lucky. But it did not bother him. He hated to be unaware of himself. He was tired in the mornings when he carried three jars in the room with him. It was his own little abode, where he'd paneled a bed against the wall and arranged it perfectly so that even if anyone broke the lock, they would still not see him unless they were begging to be killed.

He would walk into the bathroom across from the bed's foot and shut the door behind him before turning on the light. He would notice first the grayish, dead-look of sleeplessness under his eyes. He hated that appearance, but not more than he hated the normal, beige skin of his face. He did not want to look so normal. That was when he would open the bottle of white, caked paint. His fingers scooped it up and robotically wiped it across his forehead first. It smeared into his filthy hairline. Then he covered his temples and ears, running some down his cheekbones, paying little attention to his eyes knowing that they would have their own pigment. He left the scars untouched and scowled at them as if they understood how he hated the memory of them even being there at all.

Next, he had to take care of his sickly eyes. They made him look more than powerless. He threw the first jar into the corner and it made a loud rattling sound. At the opening of the second jar, he stared into a void of inky blackness that he knew to be sticky and cold. He squinted as he traced his fingers around his eyes, spreading the gooey black about his lids. There were smiling lines around his eyes, the wrinkles soaking in the color and leaving uneven splotches. He rather appreciated it that way, the unevenness of his face absorbing the demented colors with madness.

It was the red he liked best. It made him the angriest.

By this point, he was angry with himself. Angry that he was a joke, angry because some scars never healed, angry because he needed any source of coverage at all. He liked being the clown, the jester, the Joker… It was entertainment in its purest, most unfiltered form. But each morning, as he painted his face, he wondered if he would like it half so much if he were less disfigured. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't. It was none of his business to even be thinking about it.

The red paint tasted like metal. It smeared on his teeth as he carelessly trailed it across his lips. He licked the excess away and stared at himself momentarily before finally tracing the scars—then he was smiling. Then he was ready to be happy.

His heart ached a little when his hands ran over the jagged scars for the millionth time. He slapped himself, making the red paint smear on one side. Looking at his hands, there was a tinge of white and red mixing together. The black was hardly noticeable. He rubbed his hands together and pulled his gloves over his hands. They would still be damp from the night before, when he had used them to wash the makeup away. That was the end of the makeup routine.

His eyes were glazed with thought as he tilted the bowl of noodles around so that the cheese was melting evenly. Fana noticed a new kind of expression on his face as he sat wordlessly before her. "You know," she said, feeling uncertain as to whether she should continue. The noodles before her squished around her finger as she stirred, making a sound similar to the one she could hear each time he chewed on his mouth. "I don't…I don't even know if—if I would've noticed them…" He looked up to see her gesturing to her own mouth, indicating his scars. Unconsciously, he sucked on the metallic red paint slopped on his mouth. "If you hadn't said anything. I can only see because…because you told me."

He shoveled a good amount of food into his mouth. "You've…answered your own question," he said, smiling. "You'd appreciate it…if you could see them." He saw her ready to protest but put up a hand to end the conversation. Her golden eyes were piercing his own bottomless, sick brown eyes. "Remember yesterday?" he asked suddenly. At first she made no appearance of having remembered anything at all. He remembered. His blood was still boiling over the simple feeling of the dangerous blade against his face, pressing up daringly against the scars. "When you were…telling me a story?" She nodded insecurely. "And—and I leaned forward? Our noses touched." She flinched, as if it were happening at that very moment. "Maybe I wouldn't have remembered. But I can tell…because…" He pulled off one of his gloves and gave his hand a good look before reaching for Fana's face. He ran his finger down the bridge of her nose and she winced several times before he said, "There's pain_t_ on your nose. It's still there…"

"Your…" She changed her mind, having meant to further confront his character. Noticing the way his eyes lit, she could sense the same craving for pain that she had seen in him yesterday. She shook her head and thought of something—_anything_—safer to say. "Your hands are soft." He smirked.

"Thanks, lamb chop." He smacked her cheek and got to his feet, leaving his empty bowl in front of her. She got to her feet. She hated the way he was leaving her with half a bone, peaking her interest and then walking away.

"Is that the only reason for the makeup?" she called as he exited. He stopped moving and seemed to consider the question. One of his shoulders shrugged as he breathed a light, "Ha…" He reached into the pocket of his jacket. "Is the only reason just to hide the scars? _Is _it the scars?" He smiled.

"Of course not."


	10. Chapter 9: The Sitcom's Joke

Chapter Nine: The Sitcom's Joke

Strawberry: Eh, I don't like Fana in this chapter. I usually think of her as a strong person in a small frame, but here, it almost screams that the Joker has somewhat of an effect on her. Generally, I wouldn't have her thinking about the memories of her family so much, but I like tying that in with her current…predicament, if you will. But I like her much better when she's kind of… "I am woman, fear me." Even though…she's never really THAT extreme xD But she has her moments of strength. Anyway, that was too much of a tangent, so read and review s'il vous plait. :P

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Three days had passed since he had taken Fana from Harvey's little shindig…and nothing. There had been no sign of Harvey Dent. He scowled as he lounged in the center of the evergreen couch, sinking into the soft cushions as the woman on _Gotham Tonight _droned on about…nothing interesting. He did fight a smile though when she mentioned the kidnapping of five prisoners from Arkham Asylum. They were "conducting search and doing everything they could to find their whereabouts."

"You're not doing a very good job," he said, raising his eyebrows as if thinking the woman on TV could see or hear him. But it was true that they weren't making much progress. How hard was it to find an icehouse? Not as if he wanted to be caught, but it would certainly be interesting if they found out where he was. But he shook his head. He knew all too well that people were too unobservant. They'd never find him there; never find Mark Edinburgh or Thomas Schiff or Randy Pierce or Langston Waters or Charlie Fetter…or Fana Williams. "Looks like you were right, doll face," he said to himself. "No one out there wants to save you."

With a sigh, he let his eyes fall shut. He couldn't really complain, at least about his intellect when he thought of what the day had held. By that morning, every Arkham patient was completely on his side—even Randy was agreeing with him. They were all completely safe at this point; not one of them was still left in their handcuffs. This meant that the next part of the plan was ready to commence. So that day he could have been found journeying to a white-bricked series of apartments in the city. Having done his research, concocted a means of testing his enemies' intellect, he there murdered two policemen: Patrick Harvey and Richard Dent. He then printed an advanced copy of the newspaper dated for the following day, announcing the mayor's ceremony. With a black-inked pen and a red, permanent marker, he had given the photographed mayor a makeover to match his own. He snickered. He remembered having painted the faces of the two men dead, cutting their mouths upward as his own signature. Even as he did it with a smile, the reminder of it was disturbing in a way that he could not deny.

There was nothing on the news about it, as of yet at least. He had sent in an audio recording, noting the location of the two men and saying warning, "You'll find 'Harvey Dent' there." He giggled over the way he knew they would all be frantically pooling to the area, waiting to see their beloved district attorney marred. But he wasn't. He just wanted to give them a little scare, and a clue, of course. Tomorrow was the day they were going to kill the mayor. Maybe _that _would teach them all that he did indeed mean business. Maybe someone would finally come to their senses and hand over Dent…

In the back of his mind, he was doubting it.

"What are you watching?" He turned around, his arm draped over the back of the couch lazily. Fana was standing there, looking intently at the television screen. He vaguely wondered why she was not trying for the door—had she tried for it even once in the time he had taken her captive? He couldn't recall, but then again, he hadn't been around her the whole time. He hadn't instructed anyone to watch her. She was nothing to particularly worry about.

"Ah, making yourself at home?" He clicked his teeth and winked. He patted the couch loudly. "Have a seat." Making a sniffling nose as if to say she didn't _need _to, but would, she walked around the end of the couch and sat down awkwardly against the arm. He stretched his mouth back, starting to say something, but ignoring his desire to feed the fire that was womanhood. He instead stared blankly at the fluorescent television and left her to herself. He tapped his foot against the floor, hardly containing himself as he leaked excitement at what the day to come would bring. Though it was not on the news, he wondered just how insane everyone was going over what might have been an important death. Else, they were fretting over the following day's ceremony, wondering if he'd stay true to his word. Of course he would. It was almost asking too little to even have any hopes that he wouldn't do what he'd promised. Oh, they knew he would. He vaguely thought of them tightening security but…hell. What good would it do if he himself would be donning security gear? How would they expect security to be able to offer any protection when he and his men _were_ the security?

He almost wanted them to discover his plan so that there would be at least _something _interesting…other than the mayor being killed, of course. Shaking his head, he leaned against the arm of the couch and redirected his attentions to the news channel.

They were sitting on opposite sides of his couch, his fingers running along his temple as if he had a headache. Fana thought briefly to ask him if he did, but decided against it, given the way he was so frivolously pretending she didn't exist. She was not at all interested in watching the news; from the corner of her eye, she could see that he barely looked interested either. "Do you…" She paused and he looked at her, just as uninterestedly as he looked at the TV. "Do you want to change the channel…or something?"

"'Or something?'" he repeated. She sighed. Of course. "What's the 'or something'? I like to weigh my options…" Before she answered, he beckoned for her to sit at his side. She simply stared at him. "Why so far away, Fana banana?" he asked, giving a dry laugh at her contorting expression. "It's an icehouse; you get _closer_…for warmth. Not all distant…no, no, no, you…huddle…hm?" He waved his hand again, but she seemed to have frozen on the spot. This time his laugh was loud and carrying, strong and chest-borne. "Come on…a'right, so, listen…I know…that you and I, we've had some rough times." He grabbed her arm and jerked her in a way that sent her off the couch and on her feet, lest she fall backward. He knew her well enough to assume that she wouldn't have liked looking the fool. He pulled her towards him, looking up at her through her frame of sloppy hair. "But you see, you gotta work _past _all the…mess-ups…and the bad parts. Come on, sit down…" She did. He could feel her hipbone prodding against his waist. Something in his chest moved in an unordinary fashion. He rolled his eyes at his God-forsaken humanity. "See…" he cooed at the side of her face. "Now was that so hard?"

He threw his arm roughly around her neck, the inside of his elbow cradling her chin. She made a noise of displeasure, but otherwise, did not protest. He wasn't doing anything wrong, she told herself. What could she say? She managed to focus almost all of her attention on the television as he flipped through the channels, resting upon the first one that showed signs of a studio audience laughing. He leaned back, looking pleased, and rummaged for something in his pocket. She could hear the crinkling of a bag. He chuckled at something on the TV that she had not noticed and pulled something like a melted stick from his pocket. Once finished laughing, he put part of it in his mouth and chewed loudly, obviously having to avoid hitting the scars the wrong way.

She felt sorry for him. Sorry enough to allow him to have her in a chokehold as he giggled over a sitcom and stuffed whatever he was eating obnoxiously into his mouth. He was such an indescribable sort of person… The sort of indescribable person who never even wanted to be called a person at all. Her questions about him were beginning to surface quickly: who was he? Who was his _mother_? Had it been she who'd made him turn out the way he was?

What was his _name_?

"Jeff, that girl's evil," a blond woman on the TV was saying to a man who had neglected shaving for several days. He asked what she meant, and she went into a long rendition of events that all led to, "I don't know what to do." Over on her right, the Joker was smirking. His jacket sleeve was not completely covering his wrists. The skin of his arm casually brushed across her neck as he fidgeted. "Who are you talking about?" asked the man on TV.

"My _daughter_," said the woman. The audience laughed. He didn't. "She just doesn't appreciate me at all—well, unless of course she wants to go to the mall with her little boyfriend." The conversation continued.

_Daughter of mine whom appreciates me not…_

"No," she said aloud, stopping her thoughts from surfacing. Distracting herself, she got to her feet, forcing his arm from her, and said, "I'm hungry." He didn't believe her for an instant. She cringed when she noticed him following. She was twisting her neck in different directions, trying to shake her brain free of what she did not want to hear until it all but overwhelmed her:

_I am going away for a little while…I want you to stay with your father. Don't tell him where I've gone. I've hurt him enough._

Fana spun herself around and rocked on her toes, unable to walk forward anymore. She tried to think of something different but found nothing else to think of. Behind her, he grabbed her by the wrist suddenly, to even his surprise. He stared at his own hand, enclosed around her arm, wondering what had made him hold her back.

He looked at the door. Was he…afraid that she might leave? He made to let go of her, to assure himself that he certainly was not concerned with whether or not she left, but the part of him that wanted to hold on was dominating. He could sense her beginning to panic over her own thoughts. He tried to think of what might have jogged her memory of something unpleasant: something on the TV, something he had said. All he knew was that she was in distress as she thought of something she was not up for sharing with him. She was struggling, frantically trying to escape his grip, but secretly wishing for him to hold on to her with knowledge that he would be the only thing around to save her from her thoughts. They continued to bite at her, and she simply could not push away the words that daunted her being. She hated herself in that very moment, unable to pretend she was satisfied. She looked behind her, her breathing heavily controlling her body. His red smile masked a harsh frown below a furrowed brow as he restrained her with certain ease.

_You've hated the world as long as you've been alive. Your gray behavior is killing me inside, and I wonder if there's anything else I can do but try to omit anything that may be distressing you. I don't think I ever did love you. You never loved me either, so we may as well call ourselves strangers…_

His grip loosened, but she chose to stay within his grasp pathetically.

_We're enemies, I see. I'm too young, too immature. And you, only, what, thirteen? You're more mature than I am. There's something wrong. You are a monster. I am a monster, as is your father and any human being._

_Sick, masochistic monsters._

Her face was burning with heat, not from embarrassment but from such harsh emotion. She wondered if he could understand at all. He merely stood cautiously at her side, wading in the pool that was her fit of emotion. His mind was racing and pounding as if he knew just what she was thinking. He had to remind himself that even if he did know what she was thinking, it was of no importance.

In the next instant, she was plastered against his side, breathing heavily as if she had almost died. She was banging her head against his shoulder as if to punish herself for even thinking at all. He stared at the top of her head, feeling no sympathy or any emotion at all for that matter. He wondered what suddenly made her think it was acceptable for her to go to him—for what, comfort? She must have legitimately, wholly and _fully _lost her mind…

"What?" he hissed, the scent of her hair wafting to his nostrils. "What?" He hatched an idea. "_You _wanna tell me another story…" All he had to do was say this and reach in his pocket before she had grabbed a fistful of his jacket and shouted a firm, "_No._" He took a chunk of her hair in his fist and tilted her head back slightly so that she was looking up at him. She was a pathetic mess of blotchy cheeks and watery eyes. "You are who you are," he said simply, massaging her head forcefully with his thumb. She winced. "What's done is done. The only sensible way to live in this world is with a smile." Relinquishing his grip on her hair, he smacked her face lightly and said, "Gimme a smile." Her mouth was agape, eyeing him with suspicion as she tried her best to frantically interpret what he was saying. When she did not heed his words, he sighed, peeling her off of him and turning her so that she was facing him. "How do you scrawny little humans survive like that?" he said, beckoning for her to look at him. "You all get shocked when you see a glimpse of something ugly in the world, like you're surprised…that it exists at all. Of course it exists. And _that's _what's funny. The fact that the world is only ugly because of people, who are afraid of an ugly world. Funny. Hiiiiiiiiiiiilarious!" He chuckled and pressed the bottle of water he'd intended for himself into her hands. "Can you smile now?" he asked again.

Half-heartedly, she smiled falsely, just to get him off her case. "What makes you care?" she muttered.

In a flash he was backing away from her. "Oh, I don't," he assured her. "In fact, it makes me all giddy inside when people forget that the world isn't going to change for their tears. I love it." He reached in his pocket for the remote he'd stored there and extracted it. "Now. I'm going upstairs to plan my debut in the newspaper. Would you like to join or bask in your sorrows?" Delicately offended, she shook her head to both options and opened the bottle of water he had given to her. "Suit yourself," he said submissively. "Have fun."

_He cares_, she said, deciding for him absent-mindedly. _He just wants to say he doesn't._


	11. Chapter 10: A Birthday Surprise

Chapter Ten: A Birthday Surprise

Strawberry: Oh the intensity… *faints*

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5:51 A.M.

He threw himself into a sitting position on the rickety mattress beneath him. He leaned forward and pulled back one of the curtains to see the world; the sun was showing no signs of making an appearance. He thought of a few things during the mornings, in the first hours he made himself conscious in the world. First he considered the location of his wardrobe: always the same purple suit, green vest, and blue shirt. He had seven oxford shirts, all printed with a hexagonal pattern hanging sloppily beyond his closet doors. Then he thought of the bolts across his door; they had been there so that no one would turn on him. They were there so that no one would have the displeasure of happening upon his makeup-less face in the night. Next he usually thought of the day's work, of what he would need to plan. These days, that space of time was dominated by the downstairs room just outside the window of the food court. It dealt with the nervousness about the unlocked door with the word "EXIT" spelled in red neon letters above it.

It dealt with what Fana was dreaming about, or whether she was simply unaware.

5:53 A.M.

He swung his feet off the edge of the bed and stood, engaging in an internal battle between his humor and his humanity. He stared down at himself, bare and minuscule. He had on old gray slacks with enough wear and tear to make the inside material soft. That day, he didn't have to change out of them, knowing the men in uniform would be providing him with the day's wardrobe. With this in mind, he bent down to pick up a stained, white pile of cloth on the floor and began untangling it. Catching a glimpse of his reflection in the window, he scowled as he pulled the shirt over his head, covering his scarred torso. He was too skinny.

Slowly he moved towards the bathroom. He did not bother to turn on the light that morning; that day, he could not paint his face or he would completely give himself away. It was a sacrifice…but he had to make it. To distract himself, he hummed and twisted the faucet handle. Annoyed, he dunked his head in the sink, letting the water run over his head for a few seconds before switching it off again. His hands grasped the sink as he looked up, the mirror less than viewable in the darkness. His stringy hair was dripping green; it was coating the sink and making the drain bubble as it mixed with the water. It began staining his face, but he forcefully rubbed it away and threw a towel over his head, scrubbing his hair dry.

7:32 A.M.

He was walking down the hallway heavily, exercising his jawbone melodically as he went. He could hear the heartwarming shouts of his men and followers; it was the Asylum's pep talk, and the response was gravitating towards him even through closed doors. "You've gotta hold the gun like this and then the guy'll say 'Honor…etcetera, etcetera…'" one of the men was explaining. "And then you shoot once and fall back into this stance…He'll say something like… 'Ready, aim…' but you'll know that's the time for sure. That's when you make a point to shoot the same range again, but we're all gonna turn this way and bang…there goes the mayor."

He stepped into the room where the instructions were being given. He had almost expected them to be already holding rifles, but he knew better that they had to wait. He nodded to two of his men: they returned his orders and jogged out of the doorway, giving him respectful expressions as they made their way around him. They were going to kidnap the men, rounding them all up into apartment number 1502. Meanwhile, the Asylum patients were glaring at him. His stomach twisted, knowing well that they were looking at the scars. He thought of what Fana had said and how the makeup supposedly did make them less noticeable. Clearly they were the focal point of the room. Everything had gone silent.

"You know what you're doing, boys," he said scathingly, fixing his attention on a defect in the wall opposite him. "Are you ready for the mayor's…birthday surprise?" Forcibly, he feigned a grin, watching the way they stared at every single movement of the mouth he made. Then he could really truly smile as their fascination poured onto the floors. They were so _emotional_. What did he have to complain about? He may have had the scars on the outside; but all that meant was that he was not subject to the internal scars they would all suffer throughout their lives. He laughed for them, feeding their desires. "Come on. We don't wanna be late…do we?"

8:47 A.M.

There were thirteen minutes remaining. He was securing the zipper of the pants he had taken from one of the officers, who was now tied up next to his buddies with duct tape over his mouth. They were speaking muffled tones of reason, but he ignored them and happily pulled on the rest of the uniform. He shook his head, ruffling the tangled mess of hair and stuffing it beneath the hat in his hands. When he looked up, his men were still dressing. _Dogs…idiots…_ he thought about them bitterly. He knelt down in front of one of the robbed officers and examined his face. He had spiked hair and a fleshy face. His cheekbones were raised and strong and his mouth bore no signs of defect. Stupid man. "Are you worried, buddy?" he asked the man teasingly, doubling over in laughter as the man's shaking increased. "Mhaha…heee, ooh…you, uh…little nervous for today?" He removed his gloves and stuffed them in the pocket of the uniform. "Oh, don't worry. I'll take care of ya. Look, I got me a comfy ol' uniform here…and a…a nice _rifle_…" The man nearly lost it. "Shh, shh, I've got it _covered_, sunny boy."

He stood and smoothed the uniform jacket. The majority of those involved were dressed at last, and they all looked like a mess of…

Chaos. "It's a funny world we live in," he said, rust tinting his voice.

Outside, freshly garmented and ready for the plan to commence, they joined the lineup as routinely as they would if they had really been meant to be there. He stood next to Thomas Schiff, who he could hardly imagine to have looked more painfully eager in his life. He looked official and certain that he was going to be the best. Every so often, Thomas looked over at him out of the corner of his eye, obviously examining the scars. He didn't mind. He knew that people were thinking about it as they watched the news reporters arrive on the scene. Some of them at least had to have caught sight of his face. They were probably thinking, "That poor man." _Spare me_, he thought.

He peered around Schiff and looked at the band marching towards the front. He caught a brief glimpse of the mayor and grinned, hardly able to contain himself. What a day it would be…

Fana woke with a start at the sound of a reporter's voice. She looked around, vaguely considering having been discovered, the Joker's plan having been destroyed. But it was only the reporter on the TV, she having rolled over on the remote. She wondered why it had been left on the floor beside her during the night, but ignored her curiosity to shut the volume off. Before she could turn it off completely, something traveled to her ears that she could not ignore. Frantically, she got to her feet and scrambled into the room with the couch, fixing her eyes fully on the television screen.

"Even as they mourn Commissioner Lowe, these cops have to be wondering if the Joker will make good on his threat in the obituary column of _Gotham Times_ to kill the mayor."

The remote slipped from her hands. She craned her neck to see the clock on the wall in the other room: It was merely a couple of minutes before nine o'clock. By then, he was usually up and around, somehow making his way into her presence either by waking her or being right there with her when she awoke. So where was he today? "Oh, oh, not good," she said, racing out of the room and over to the ice rink. He wasn't there either. It was…imperative that he was there right then to prove that he wasn't going to stir things up by attacking the mayor. He had gone out a few times before, letting her simply know that he was going to be out on some kind of…adventure. Knowingly, she accepted that it probably meant terrorizing the citizens of Gotham. And she hadn't bothered herself with that before; she simply sat around all day, occasionally setting foot on the ice or rummaging around in the food court. But this time was different.

This time, it was the mayor.

"No, no, no, _no_, where _are _you?" she spat, swerving into the food court and going right back out again when she didn't see him. She stopped at the staircase, briefly considering that other people might have been up there, even if he was not. She had never been up there before, though it was true she'd been invited. Still…still it did not seem to be a good idea. "You're an idiot," she said to him, wishing he was there to hear it. "The _mayor_?" It was too much commotion for her to handle. Throwing caution to the wind, she started up the stairs in a rush.

The hallways were empty.

Music was playing boomingly in his ears as the band walked up. All the men were wearing plaid skirts. _That's embarrassing_, he noted, collecting air in his cheeks to suppress his laughter. _I like my costume better, sheriff. _"Are you nervous, Mr. Schiff?" he said, tilting his head to the side so that Thomas could better hear him.

"Uh…a bit," Thomas replied.

"Aw, why so?" he prodded. "You know…this is your stage, Tommy. _You_…have the spotlight. And nobody—I mean _nobody_—is gonna take that away from you. Huh?" He knocked his elbow into Schiff's upper arm. "You're the authority," he went on. "After all…what more could you ask for than a chance to…upset the established order?"

Thomas looked heightened.

"Oh, my…_God_…" Fana opened the last door in the hallway. She had already stepped into and searched through three different dorm-styled rooms. Most of the rooms were filled with cheap, thin beds. Two other rooms she went into looked completely filled with some kind of ammunition. The one she had entered now had only one bed, a larger one with a thinned mattress. There were three black and white piles of clothing on the floor, but she turned her head away, preferring to look at something else. There had not been one person in any of the rooms so far—she was banking on this one. Draped over a tall dresser was a purple jacket; on the floor below it laid the pants to accompany it. _His room_. She sighed and massaged her forehead. "Where are you?" she whispered.

The mayor had begun speaking. He was not listening to any of the words; instead he scanned over every face that stared in his direction. He did his best to play the innocent face, but could not help but think he was unsuccessful, judging by the way people still stared at him like he was something to worry about. He was, of course, but he was hoping, in general, that they wouldn't wise-up this time around. Most likely, they wouldn't; he knew people well enough. They couldn't put two and two together to save their lives. Otherwise, he would've already been in the back of a cop car, being towed away to Arkham Asylum. He wondered if anyone had recognized any of the former prisoners. For Thomas' sake, he hoped that Mr. and Mrs. Schiff were prowling around in the bystanders, trying their hardest to make sure they were correct in what they thought they saw. _Oh, you are_, he thought, closing his eyes to the silence when the mayor paused. He straightened his posture slightly, noticing the way he seemed hunched over next to the other men.

"We must remember that vigilance…" He looked up, recognizing that the time had nearly come. Selflessly, he offered Thomas the glory of it all, watching the way his mouth curled in a satisfied smile before the cue had even gone out. "…is the price of safety." The mayor nodded and stepped away from the podium to observe the salute. The gun was jumping in his hands, rearing to go.

"Honor…guard…atten-hut!" He raised his gun to his shoulder, noticing that all signs of any nervousness in Thomas had disappeared. "Ready…aim—fire!" He turned his gun to point at the sky and fired a shot, as did the men at his sides. Not all of them were at his command; some were left over, some that hadn't been stripped and robbed. Everything was going to be perfect…

She crossed the room, squinting in the pale sunlight that seeped between the curtains. Noticing a doorway, she stepped inside, searching for the switch on the wall the minute she entered. The first sight she saw made her jump slightly. In the mirror was her reflection; framing her reflection was a set of white hand prints, having clearly been dragged down. There was a crack at the very bottom where the trail stopped, as if it had been hit. "You're full of hate," she muttered, gingerly resting her hand on the broken glass.

"Ready…aim…" Another shot. In seconds the timer would release, the blinds would go up…

"Ready…aim…"

The timer. Twelve men turned on their heels to face the mayor. He himself was the most hate-filled as he fired the shot at the dark-haired man by the podium. Someone looked at him. _Now _they knew. But it was too late.

He stepped through the iron door to the icehouse, anger welling in the pit of his stomach. He wrenched the hat from his head and tossed it to the side, instantly glancing up to check for Fana's whereabouts. Growling empty threats as he strode, he noticed vaguely that she was not asleep on the benches. The television had been left on, but he could think of no reason it should have mattered. He walked into the next room, looking over the back of the couch.

She wasn't there, either.

He could hear his men chatting just outside the door. They did not share his immense distress. Beginning to feel…uncontrolled, he went to look for her in the ice rink, but that too was empty. "Where are you?" he hummed, thoroughly telling himself that it did not matter if she had left. He peered in the food court but yanked his attentions away the moment he did not see her. His only hope was up the stairs. "Fana, Fana, Fana banana, you just couldn't make this simple, _could _you?" He stamped his feet against the staircase, huffing as he went, his bad mood escalating. "You didn't leave," he assured himself. "No, no, no, you don't have anywhere to go, do ya, doll face? Nah…" He threw open the first door in the hallway. "You don't have a family." He tried the next one. "You don't even have a friend to try to get you out of…this mess…" The third one. There were only six doors; she _had _to be there. "_Nobody_…" The fourth and fifth. A deep sound escaped the back of his throat, a sound of desperate annoyance. Good ol' Jim Gordon had saved the little mayor's life…and at no cost.

He opened the door to the room he had slept in. He didn't see her, and his heart gave a satisfied leap—perhaps _un_satisfied. Maybe…she had simply gone. "That's ok…" He gave his face several helpless smacks before taking a step through the doorway. "Maybe now she'll…live a little…ohaha…" He headed towards the bathroom, intending to apply his paint for the day, hardly up for the empty feeling a bare face gave him.

The bathroom light was on. He fell into a shock when her face appeared around the corner. She was sitting on the floor, cross-legged, cradling two of the paint jars in her hands, supposedly doing nothing at all with them.

She looked shocked as well. He wanted to kick her in the face.

"Hey, you didn't…"

"Get out." Fana blinked, her heart racing at his appearance. What reason did he have for not painting his face that day? She tried to redirect her attention, but her eyes continuously fell on his mouth, scarred and cut, with nicks across his lower lip and jagged, pulled slice marks stretching to his cheekbones. She started to stand, but before she had even had the opportunity to do it on her own, he was in front of her, yanking her up painfully by the arm. "I said _get out_," he spat at her, pulling her behind him to the doorway.

"What's going on?" she asked. He wanted to slice her neck right then and there, pretending like she didn't know. He snapped his wrist and sent her hurtling back into the hallway, the jars of paint clattering onto the floor; one of the tops burst off. She was looking at him, as if _she _was the one who'd been hurt. As if one of her greatest secrets had just been revealed to him.

"You like 'em?" he snarled, making heartily sure he still had at least one knife on him. He did. "Huh? Yeah, take a _good _look…" He pointed to the sides of his face and said, "You happy now? Yeah…I _bet _you are, you—"

"You think I care about that?" He stepped toward her threateningly, and she backed away in turn. "I didn't…I didn't _do _this on purpose; you weren't even here!" He grabbed her by the arm again and thrust her against the wall. She only stared back at him with the same sickly determination. "I'm _sorry_, I thought—"

"Is that so?" he hissed into her face, raising his eyebrows. She pried herself from the wall. "_Spare _me."


	12. Chapter 11: Trust In Pairs

Chapter Eleven: Trust in Pairs

Strawberry: I've been waiting to share this chapter FOREVER. This is one of the ones I wrote like, second or third because the idea really came so quickly and I knew that this was how I wanted them to end up. Read to discover :D Oh, and the Joker may be a tad out of character in this chapter; I revised it A LOT from what it was and he's still a little rocky character-wise. He'll get better again, though, now this chapter's done. In twelve, he'll be good, you have my word :]

P.S.: I want to thank Something Girl for making me this pretty banner! You can go to her profile to see it. I really like it!!

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He was raging. Steaming. Every possible form of anger and distress was burning in his expression. She could sense his pain, his agony…his fear. They were one in the same, and she shuddered to admit it to herself. She understood him, and even when she could not, she was constantly trying to, finding him excuses. She knew that he was changing her by listening and watching her. He was there, wanting to see what she was feeling and wanting to understand Fana Williams whom he knew to be deeply dangerous to him. She was a strange girl whose opinion was now valued in his mind. He hadn't valued opinion in years. She was a light in the darkness, a faint glimmer that showed something was normal…_he _was normal…

If she were to see him in such a state…he would lose every hope of her company. He hated normality.

Fana wanted to cry. Her forehead wrinkled, knowing well his pain and regretting instantly how devilish her own curiosity could be. She was trying to catch her breath, feeling a sob locked in her vocal chords, drying her throat and paining her. She could scarcely even see him through all of the pain he was suffering over what she had seen, though she had known he had just been out and around in the same state of bareness. She tried to get another look at him, but within a moment, he was forcing her into the wall, standing over her as though he were a guard. Their bodies were touching up until their waists. He was roughly grabbing at her face, flipping his knife out readily near her ear. She was not afraid, for her blind trust in him did not allow it. She simply stared at him, thunderstruck—or perhaps in awe—as his breathing quickened and his emotion stretched into her aura. He was out of his mind, and at this point, he truly looked as inhuman as she had ever seen him.

_I don't know what I'm doing_, he repeated over and over and over again until his mind was full to the brim. _I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, it's all…it's gone, I don't…_ He was breathing more heavily than he had in a while. He was panting almost, breathing into Fana's face, noticing ineptly the way she did not flinch but was looking at him with such pity. "What have…why is…" He couldn't piece together anything. He had _just _been outside, causing a huge riot in for the mayor, and he hadn't any makeup on. He had been undercover, he couldn't have had it on. But so many had seen him. So many must have noticed those disfigured three-time-cut scars on his face that marred and destroyed every aspect of humanity he had…it had all started with the time he had permanently ingrained them. That was when he had gone to the very end of his mind.

"It's…it's ok, it's me, I wouldn't…" She was lost. Fana put her hands on each of his elbows and gave him a tiny jolt that was enough to calm him but little enough to keep him from further anger. "Hey, look," she said firmly. She could hardly hear her own thoughts over his panicked breathing. He had turned his head to the side, and she fought hard to gain the trust of his gaze again. He was muttering, looking every which direction, drowning in the chaos of his own mind. "Look, I thought we'd…" She wasn't sure where she was going with her words. "I thought you knew that I wouldn't… I wouldn't be judging you. You made me a promise and you've kept it; it's been four days and you still haven't hurt or killed me. I…thought you knew I wouldn't say anything if you let me go. A-and that's not as bait. I told you I wouldn't be ignorant as a human being and I would listen to you. Look—_listen_!" She gave him a firmer shake and finally he was staring at her. "I don't _care_ about the sc—"

"_Don't…you…say it_," he yelled into her face, letting his mouth turn upward in a momentary smile. He felt woozy as though he were losing his balance. He gripped her face tighter to keep from falling forward. "There is…_no one in this entire world_ that _anyone _can trust. No one to believe in or try to understand. There is none of that. I can't…_believe_…" His head fell onto his chest as sickening disgust flooded from his lungs to his head. Fana could feel his hands shaking on her face. She had only experienced his disturbance about the scars once before, when he had first captured her. He had told her the story of how he had gotten them—from his own mother—and he had been angry. But something had changed within the time she had been there. He was different at least slightly from what he was when he had taken her. He was…somehow more sane. And at the same time, he was less sane.

He was blinded by feelings, and feelings he hated. Perhaps he might have just yelled up at the ceiling, but he was not sure how to. He could feel the aching to do so, the urge to sob and throw a fit upon the ground and yet…he could not summon the tears nor the sobs. He spoke to his feet, though he was addressing her. He knew he had to say something. Fana had done something. She was not a helper or someone who was part of the crew. She was not just someone who wouldn't turn him in. She was…someone he wanted to talk to. Someone whom he genuinely wanted to hear his views. He had watched her calm behavior and discovered that there was something that knew him. She could relate to him, whether she knew it or not. He knew she was so different that it almost pained her, and everything she had felt was being suppressed. Fana Williams might have been just like him. To his horror, he realized that he was deathly afraid of what might have happened if she _had_ been just like him. She had been stronger. She had overcome her insanity. She had stuffed it away well, not just until it exploded, but buried under light and goodness and perfection. Everything that a good human should have been. A true human…the first humans in the world were perfect until they were destroyed. Fana had embraced the purity of Adam and Eve and shoved away the snake. However, he himself had been too weak to deny the snake that tempted him with things that may have been better or easier.

"Goodness."

Fana stared. What had he said?

"I don't…what?" His breaths were wheezing, but he finally lifted his head. She took the chance to cautiously examine his face. Stringy pieces of tinted hair were framing his cheekbones. She could suddenly notice the smell of aerosol paint radiating from him: it was not grime or chlorine. It was merely hair spray. His skin was an even, dull tone that was golden in shade and gentle. His forehead had creases of anger or worry. Perhaps annoyance or even laughter. His eyebrows were light brown and thick, whereas they had been nearly unnoticeable for the black that had stained them. Dark circles lingered under his eyes, but not from makeup. It was the appearance of a man in distress, a man who was constantly running from something that could never be escaped. He was tired. Something was tiring him. Even with that mild look of danger in his brown eyes, he still looked perfectly plain and normal until…

His lips.

"I…" he started, carefully keeping watch on her gaze, wondering what thoughts were swimming in her mind as she looked at him. "Me, I'm…weak. That's how you're _making _me." Fana's eyebrows rose at the center of her forehead. Her level of pity might never have been so escalated as it was at that very moment.

"Weak?" she repeated softly, sparing him as gentle an expression as she could manage.

"Weak." He tried to stop himself from shaking, but his hands only trembled more against the soft skin of her cheeks. "I want…I want it, I want…" He tilted his head back and then down again to try to make any sense of his thoughts. "I know you, Fana Williamssss," he hissed. "I know…I know what you are, I know…who you're _pretending _to be. You fixed yourself, huh? You can't tell me you aren't the _same_…But I like that. I like the fact that _you saved _yourself. It's very…noble of you…mhaha. But don't worry." He nodded. "I still know. You're…you're distorted." Her eyes were bloodshot. He could not comprehend his desire to make them clear again. He laughed lowly, just halfway in an unsatisfying fashion. "Like me. I'm a monster, Fana banana," he told her. She blinked. "And you were, too, but you didn't want to be, hm? So gimme a lesson, huh? Tell me…how you did it." She looked at the scars across his mouth as massive and painful they looked. His mouth curved downwards; he was finally serious. "_Fix_ me."

She was not sure what had happened to her before she had tilted her head and craned her neck towards him until she had touched his lips with her own.

She didn't check for his reaction. It wasn't about his reaction. It wasn't about her strange curiosity. It wasn't that she loved him or was infatuated. She did not love him. She was not infatuated, though her ominous curiosity made her wonder of her feelings. It was about the scars. How they felt against her mouth, what they said to her heart and soul, and what it felt like to him to have someone feel them so intimately. Was it even his lips she was kissing anymore? She was so curious about his face that she could not help but search for the scars until she'd reached the end of one of them. They had not been stitched. They had never looked stitched, but they had sincerely been mended with only more skin. Had there been stitches, the scars might have been less ridged or prominent.

He was standing in shock. He felt like a rag doll with a child who cared for him enough to smother him to the point where he was not sure what was happening and what would follow. If anything, he was only breathing harder…and faster…more uncontrollably.

"If you can say you need to be fixed," she said quietly against the side of his face. His cheeks were warm even in the cold of the icehouse. "…then you don't need mine or anybody else's help." He was in awe. He moved his hands very slowly from her face and dropped his knife into his pocket. He hesitated a moment. No feeling he had ever known was quite like his immense confusion as he wondered whether he would act in response. He simply wanted to understand. He touched her waist with one hand curiously. When she exhaled, her breath swept over his neck. He felt uneven.

Fana could tell without looking that he was lost. He might have been afraid, not knowing what was happening or what he felt towards it. She tried to not to analyze him, for she knew she could easily have been wrong about anything she guessed. If anything, she had made his feelings worse and more conflicting. She was unsure of how she could possibly fix the discomfort without having to let go of him. In fact, all she managed to do was pull him closer. She did not understand him as they stood there against one another. He was a man that she knew to be something, and something indeed, but the something must have been unknown still.

She felt his lips touch the corner of her mouth. For a moment he seemed frozen, until she felt with a tickle his lips moving against hers. "Why do you bother?" he whispered, his mouth curving upwards against her face. He continued on: "You know I'm…already too corrupted to be sane. I _love _it that way. Stop…stop trying to help. You're just…making things difficult. Who are you? Who am I? I never _learned_ anything. No, I learned it all wrong…_good_…" Too many thoughts were racing through his head. So often this was the case that he became even more shocked to know that this time, he was handling it so horribly. He was bound in chaos and perplexity. He acted only in body but not in mind. He was the puppet come to life, yet he hadn't been given a brain. Fana's skin was soft with comfort. He knew himself to have been speaking for some time, mumbling off the top of his head, as it was the only place that seemed to have any idea of what was going on. He knew that she was listening, yet her hands were moving between his shoulders and spine, further distracting him. It tired him, though as she continued to embrace him, he recalled only having returned her affections a few times. For the majority of those long lost moments, he was simply exhaling. He could not inhale but to smell her scent—a teasing bastard of a scent that drew his face into the nook of her neck every so often, just to breathe in.

Fana, Fana, Fana Williams…

Fana jumped slightly when she felt his fingers clench against her back. She moved away from his face and noticed how much wearier he looked than he had before. In his mind, everything remained still, a swimming void of emptiness. That is, until he felt her hand gently touch his face. After all, how much longer would it take for him to have understood what she wanted in return? Maybe she was trying to teach him something: he was learning. Maybe she was trying to make him search his thoughts for what he meant by it all: he was searching. And maybe—just maybe—it was nothing like that at all. Perhaps her only objective was to awaken his affection, no matter how empty it was:

She had awakened it.

He tried his hardest not to toss his saliva as he skittishly felt his scars within the flesh of his cheeks. Fana's hand was stroking his face knowingly as if she were reading and interpreting his every thought better than he could ever have hoped to. Unsurely, he tilted his head to the side, intending to return to her what she was asking of him, or at least invite her to recognize him. Her index finger was running along the length of the scar on the right side of his face. He could sense her compassion as he inched closer to her dry, barren lips as his own moved slowly in facial analysis. He thought of guns and punishment…and how beautiful those things were to him. They weren't the norm, and that was why they were perfect. How dare she try to toy with his mind to make him think that all of those things weren't _exactly _what he wanted?

He wrenched her against him, unable to stop himself. He knew that she might have been startled but ignored it. Fana could feel the tickle of closeness, but she was too preoccupied with the depth of his eyes that had not been there before. He had been an empty person prior to this meeting. There might have been moments where he had been human and human alone, but for most of their acquaintance, he had been unreachably absent. When he kissed her, she melted into the kind of finality that might have satisfied a person for the rest of their life. Somehow she felt accomplished, like already she had gotten through to his human side. To be frank, she believed she must have found emotion if she could have gotten him to kiss her. She had to have done _something_.

How he hated Fana Williams for trying to take away his smile…

He was gentle, she noted. Though everything about his conduct suggested viciousness, he touched her as delicately as though she would break in half. They were two people kissing as butterflies fluttering their wings against each other. He was an empty man, she told him mentally. He could be filled, though, with all the good things. He did care for her. He cared for people and himself and what he'd become because of something that had happened in the past. Her fingers danced around his neck, which only made him more nervous. He felt as though he might have been entirely corrected at any moment, though he wanted to believe she had enough care for him to leave him to himself.

It was immersing. He was simply so full of secrets that he had captured her interest and would not relinquish it. The knowledge that there was a heart beating behind that twisted smile and broken face captivated her in the way that she was certain could never change. He had to know what she was, had to know what had happened in her past to make her identifiable, and he had to have…

He thought first of money. No, he didn't need any of those superficial things. Power, dominance, happiness… Yes, happiness. That was it. All along he'd thought he knew happiness when all he really knew was some morbid sort of twisted fun. But that _was _happiness! Though he knew it, he couldn't help but wonder what Fana would teach him if she bothered at all. She'd made him aware of its existence: some new kind of happiness. _Hunger_, he thought, breathing in the scent of her saliva, _is more than a craving. It's a NEED…_

Before he knew what had come to him, Fana had yanked herself away from him, their mouths making a smacking sound as they jerked. He scrambled himself together and tried to back away from her, wondering if she'd already decided she had been wrong and that he was a hopeless case. Well, he was. She was smarter than she looked. He let his mouth curve up on one side slyly. He wanted to let go of her, give her space, if there was anything in her mind that was changing. But if he did…wouldn't things get worse? _Would they?_

"I want your trust," she said airily, maintaining a straight face and a firm volume to assure him she was not going to let him beat around the bush. She needed beyond anything in the world to know what was behind him and what still lay in front of because of the past. She could not be distracted nor could she let him be distracted from the fact that it was time she started a genuine sort of…interrogation.

He blinked very humanly and immediately had to shake his head to remind himself that he was not allowed to blink in such a simple way. Not yet, at least. In ways, he did want to change, but only slightly, just enough so that he could hear her, but that lone part of him that was slowly losing dominance was still screaming for power. Power was _beautiful_, as was control. He needed those things, and if Fana was going to tear them away from him, she was against him. _You're wasting your time_,he thought.

"Do you trust me?" Fana repeated into his face. Her nose gave a noticeable twitch. From such a distance, he could see the array of colored flecks in her golden irises, glinting with expectation. Half-heartedly, he nodded, still frustrated and feeling air-headed. "Say it," she demanded. "I want to hear it." For a moment, his throat seemed to have acquired a dryness that enabled him no sound. The sheer expectance in Fana's face was enough to bring him to his health.

"Yes…" he whispered hoarsely, moving closer to her again. She held him back with one hand on his chest, stirring his insides.

"Tell me."

"I _trust_…you." He turned his head away darkly, soaking in the vision of the creature he knew himself to be. In the confines of his mind, he wondered briefly what life might be like if everything stopped being so humorous. He had been violently certain that he had understood life to its fullest and had become a _master _of the minds of himself and the rest of the world. He had become invincible to reason and guilt. Always—_always_—he had wished to just die. He had never thought about for what reason he'd lost any thirst or urge to live. He just wanted to do things, do whatever he pleased to show that rules simply tied you down. Was it because of his twisted views that he wanted himself dead? Did he know that he was a danger, and that he was a disturbed kind who did not deserve to remain on the earth?

Had he known himself so well, even, that he could not recognize his own knowledge?

He let his arms fall to his sides. He sneered at the wall behind Fana's head, thinking of the time when he had highly supposed to receive Harvey Dent instead of a therapy session. He was aching with feelings of all sorts, feelings he could not bare to categorize, lest he fall back to that desperate confusion. He _knew _what he wanted; he always knew. He wanted to be in control of himself and everyone, and he was. Fana wasn't going to change that, no matter _what _she did.

He repeated his name over and over again in his head. It was a name he felt barely recognizable to his utmost pleasure. He tossed his saliva, and Fana shut her eyes briefly, mentally avoiding lashing out at him for not quieting himself when she knew well he could.

"You don't trust me." Fana eyed him suspiciously. She tried to fix her gaze upon his eyes but could not seem to tear her attention away from his curving mouth for whatever reason. She simply squinted at him, silently asking for his reasoning but not secure enough in herself to sincerely wonder. "That's good," he edged simply. "You shouldn't." His following smile made Fana fearfully wonder if any progress she credited herself with having made might have been destroyed, but when he laughed, it was less heavy and had and air of awkwardness, as though it were an attempt at a real, genuine laugh rather than a psychotic one. "You want to…" he said, raising his eyebrows. "But you shouldn't."

"I want to know," she said. There was no need she say any more, for he knew just what she meant.

Gone completely empty, he was dragged behind her until they had reached the loveseat in the lobby downstairs. He was seated gently as she planted herself beside him. He did not dare look at her with every hideous thought that was crossing through his mind. God, he wanted to wrap his hands around her neck and apply pressure for long enough to finish her. The danger in him was feuding, screaming for him to just kill her then and there and forget it had ever happened. He had been living with a smile for so long. It was too much to have to change his ways now, and for some woman he did not know.

But when he looked at her, all he could say was, "My mother was first. My uncle stitched them..." He smacked his lips together. "Then my father did it. It was never stitched because after that, he killed everyone else. They laughed at me, and I hurt. I grew up, got bigger, got a wife…and then I tried to save her by doing it to myself for the third time. Then she left. Everyone left. So anyone else in the way had to die. That's when I started…" He grinned at the thoughts of all the things that had happened. Even as he battled with the dejection and the losses he'd suffered, he couldn't help but speak of it fondly.

Fana's lips were lightly parted, but not with surprise or fear. Her eyes were endearingly calm, and he wished for nothing more at that moment than for time to repeat itself so that she would let him hold onto her again, and he hated himself for it.


	13. Chapter 12: Story of a Hypocrite

Chapter Twelve: Story of A Hypocrite

Strawberry: When the Joker laughs, I like to write "Heeh" sometimes because it's kind of dorky. And of course, in Word, the little red line comes up under it because it's not a word. So, for the hell of it, I right-clicked to see if there were any suggestions. Here they are, in order: Heed, Heel, Heehaw, **Heath**. I thought that was pretty golden x] So with that, enjoy the chapter! (As I run off bitterly to the choreography rehearsal for Oklahoma that is responsible for my sprained and bruised wrist :/)

* * *

He sat on the couch blindly, smiling to himself at the thought of what he'd so far told her. In the back of his mind, it made him hate himself for saying anything at all, but, in reckoning, he decided that there couldn't have been any harm in it. If a person knew half of the story, they might as well hear the entire thing…for kicks, of course. He adored sharing a funny story, and boy, did he have a good load of them. He still had control, he told himself. He _always_ had control, and if ever he didn't, he banked on the fact that he'd have a strikingly better day, because it meant he was allowed some bloodshed.

He laughed dryly, continuing to pretend that Fana was not sitting beside him, studying him.

"So…I take it your mother…she found your father…at some point." That was the first thing she asked.

He scowled and turned his head away, though he was already sitting sternly and uncomfortably, hardly even waiting to rest his back against the couch. He gave a short, "Mhm," for an answer and faced forward again. "So…when you told me that story…when we were in the car," she prodded carefully but with too much curiosity to ignore her questions. "That was the full story, wasn't it?" Running his tongue along his gums, he nodded shortly, awkwardly. "And then—"

"_Then_," he cut in, "they decided to do a little holy matrimony. And therein lies the problem." He lifted his hands and moved them up and down, as if weighing his options, though Fana was not sure of what options he could be considering. "Well, you know. I had…_marks_, if you will, even though it was stitched. Questions…see, that always raised…questions. Because he didn't know she'd done it. And I wasn't gonna say anything." He made a motion that signified he thought that Fana ought to know exactly why. "See, I was there, figuring a little marriage might make her a little…fixed. And, you know, considering no one knew any better, Daddy was a bit of a…a drinker…an-and a fiend. And one night—"

"Wait." She had lifted her arm and beckoned in his direction. He sat perfectly still, his heart pounding throughout his entire body. He twisted his neck until the point where it made a cracking noise and some of the tension in his muscles was released. "How did they find each other?" she proposed. "What made them—can you please…come here?"

"You wanna get killed," he assumed animatedly. She flinched slightly, but for the most part, ignored him and continued to reach in his direction. "Thought you would know by now…how I like a good story to be told…" He patted the side of his leg, smiling half-heartedly as if in comedic warning that she ought to have known better. "Oh, no…you didn't think that I'm…a _changed _man, did you? No…oh, don't worry. I know that's what you want…but you see, you gotta _work _for what you want. It doesn't just happen, you know…" He stood up, noticing the way her eyes followed him closely, their yellowy tint boring into him. Looking at his feet light-heartedly, he took one single step in her direction. "You're supposed to gradually _test _your work…that's what I would do. But you, you're just…" As he approached her, Fana's eyes darted edgily back and forth between him and the area beside her on the couch. "You're just a _fool _for danger, aren't you, mmmissy?" He fell back on the couch beside her, throwing his feet onto the cushions sideways so that he was facing away from her. "Bad idea. I'll tell ya. From right…here…"

His back was arched. Fana searched for his motive, well aware that it might have been some kind of coverage for him. He was obviously insecure without the makeup; perhaps he wasn't interested in making himself weaker than he already supposed himself to be.

The minute any sound escaped his mouth, she swiveled in his direction and reached for him. Her fingers lightly grazed his sides and he inched forward a bit, as if trying to shake her off, but she did not let go. "You can control yourself," she said firmly, wrapping her arms around him. "You're strong enough for that." She rested her chin on his shoulder and he sighed with an almost annoyed edge to his breath. It wasn't about the affection; it was about teaching him to control himself instead of letting violence and laughter mask the things that hurt him most.

Out of her peripheral vision, she could see his jaw tense. "There were…lots of men, for her." His arm brushed against her hands and he jerked it away swiftly in response. Oh, couldn't she just get off of him… "For him…mm, he didn't have as many people to search through to find her. Couldn't tell you why he wasted his time looking for her…not like there was ever anything between him…besides…the obvious." He glanced at her and shook himself away. "But that's the end of that story…the _idea _is…that an alcoholic man living in a house with a skittish little boy…those two things just don't mix." He clapped his hands together in demonstration. "So one night…he goes out on one of his…drunken escapades and…when he comes back, he goes off…crazier than…than usual." His fingers itched for the knife in his pocket, but he restrained himself with much difficulty. Fana only made the situation worse as her arms tightened around him. "My mother…she, uh…she gets the kitchen knife…" He laughed, his tone empty and deep. "See, that was where she went wrong. You _know _you never pull a knife out with a drunk, don't you? They'll get all…fidgety and nervous first, right? And then…they get _angry_ because in their eyes…they're the authority. So, you know…he's bigger…stronger…he gets the knife…ha…and he—he gets her with it." He could feel Fana shift, resting her forehead against his back. "And then…here's the funny part…he comes at _me _with the knife… he starts going on about how…I got those funny little marks on my face that look like a smile. Then he laughs—because it's funny—and he says…here's what he says, he says… '_Why so serious_?'"

Her fingers tensed. Against him, he could feel her heart beat racing. "He…sticks the blade in my mouth…" He made a jerking motion, hardly able to contain his desire to turn around and stick his pocketknife in Fana's mouth and yank it upwards. _Birds of a feather…_ he thought momentarily. "He says it again: '_Why so serious_-_suh_?' My mouth…stings a little. 'Let's put a _smile _on that face.' So!" He turned his head, catching a mere glimpse of Fana's hair. "He does," he whispered. "And I bled that _whole _night…sat in the house by myself…couldn't do anything, couldn't…_call _anybody." He was shaking his head twitchily, as if working hard to assure her that there were no options. "He'd just come back and kill me, see…" Fana exhaled.

"Did…did you cry?" she asked dimly.

He wriggled out of her grip and turned himself quickly to face her again. "I might have," he said, grinning. "Might not have."

She stayed silent for a moment, her mind transparent to him; it was something he enjoyed. Then, "So…what did you do after that? You had to have done _something_ eventually." His forehead wrinkled, as if he were drawing into his memory to try to recall what he had ended up doing. Coming to a visible conclusion, he patted Fana's knee and smiled.

"Mm…story for another day, banana." He wondered if there would even _be _another day. In the pit of his stomach, he was wishing fully and truthfully that there wouldn't be, and he could completely forget about it. Noticing that twenty minutes had gone by, he fancied that he had not been in a dream at all, though he had been hoping for it. Most of his dreams never made sense anyway; they were always unclear, always picturesque rather than informational. He gathered that if his dreams had gone from swirls of stomach-churning colors to Fana wrenching a dead past to the surface, he would have done better to turn completely to apathy.

_I don't believe in the past_, he told himself mentally. _I believe that time is just another human excuse to classify every—single—thing._ _Humans…are annoying. Fana is annoying…_ Paying special attention to his heart beating, he hotly added, _I am annoying_. He shut his eyes, his anger bubbling to a point that he thought he might have suffered an organ explosion…if those existed; if it even made _sense_. He searched desperately for Fana's motives, firmly trusting that she was only trying to escape. Reminding himself that she was annoying and he didn't need her heinous prodding, he forced himself to keep from worrying that she was. He didn't worry. He wasn't _supposed _to worry, because he didn't need to. He was the authority, even if the authority meant he was in constant control. He could handle the responsibility; after all, if he was the authority, he could eliminate responsibility as a whole.

Vaguely, he held an awareness of Fana watching him as though she were afraid he might be making some sort of sudden movements. At this, he briefly considered making some sort of jumping motion to upset her, but he ignored the desire and swiveled around so that his legs hung over the front of the couch. He faced the television screen. As he stared at the blank, empty screen, he came to the conclusion that he was not wasting his time with Fana because he wanted her to help _him_; no. He wanted it to go the other way around. He didn't need help, he reminded himself. He was the one who was ahead of the curve in the useless analysis of humanity. He wanted to switch back time so that he was standing up stairs, cornering Fana, speaking those idiotic words where he condemned himself a "monster" in need of fixing. This only conflicted more, he realized, because he didn't agree with dwelling on the past. It had happened, but it was gone. There was no going back. If he just continued to abuse Fana's so-called…assistance…he could abuse her desire to listen and that meant he had a perfect way to teach her what she was trying to fight off. She was just as human as anyone else. She could _easily _be corrupted.

He was going to fix Fana.

The minute he thought this, he became, again, conscious of the weapon sitting in his pocket. He thought of the opportunity he had had when she was sitting there completely at his mercy, listening to him talk. Why had he restrained himself? There was nothing really _wrong _with teaching people the things they needed to know, and there was nothing wrong with becoming…more acquainted with human emotion. He used the knife because…well, because guns were too quick. With guns, there was only one brief moment of shock, contorting a person's face as they became aware that they were dying. But then…the whole dying thing did come, and there wasn't even that awareness. No emotions. No knowledge of anything; just stone-cold dead. And it wasn't seeing dead people that made his heart race; it was killing, and creating another member of the dead.

With his knives, there was hope of a slowness, a lingering knowledge of the only fate a person could expect. Over time, he had noticed that some people reacted to such a fate differently than others. Over time, he could see that their minds were working so furiously to accept death either welcomingly or unwelcomingly. Sometimes the person would just sob and sob and, even though the deed was done, begging to be spared. They were always the ones who likewise showed their cowardice and lack of appreciation for the time they were given. Those were the selfish humans. Other times, he would come across a person who would fight him until the very last breath, even if they couldn't stand. They wouldn't cry or beg for mercy. They'd do their best to mar his confidence, saying things like, "You'll just get caught," or "You're the reason the world is so ugly." And what did he care? Nothing. But they were funny in their own way, in that, they expected their words to leave an impact. Perhaps they would have done so on someone else; someone more…sane. But not him. Those were the things that made him smile most.

He wondered, was Fana the fighting type or the crying, begging sort of person? "Well," he said to himself as quietly as he could manage. Checking discreetly, he noticed that Fana seemed to have paid the word no attention. She was probably the type of girl who was…neither of the two things, and that annoyed him somewhat. It gave him no purpose, no motive for touching her with the slightest villainous attempt. He would have wagered that as he slid the knife into her stomach or ribcage, she would have given him the same gentle empty expression that she had given him before. It almost held an air of…pity. And he hated to be pitied.

By that point, he was curious.

"I could kill you," he said under his breath, intending for her to hear this time. He turned to look at her, but her expression had not faltered—not even once. _Shows I know what I'm talking about…heh…_ he thought distantly. "Are you aware of that, doll face?" His hands were folded in front of him, rested between his knees as he leaned forward. Slowly, she raised her left hand to her mouth and gave it a peck, before lowering it onto his hands gently. His eyes followed her every move: he looked at her other hand moving from the back of the couch toward him. She reached up to push his hair behind his shoulder and leaned forward with a slowness that made him want to strangle her. _She can be taught_, he reminded himself quickly.

"I know you could," she replied, letting her hand drop onto his shoulder.

"And are you scared?" he asked her temptingly.

"Not at all," she answered.

"Makes you a little…crazy…doesn't it?"

She shrugged and lifted her eyebrows. "Maybe if you look at it a certain way."

He sneered. "You're making a _lot _of mistakes, Fana banana." As he exhaled, a dull laugh escaped his lips. He had never looked less alive than he did in that moment.

"Oh, yeah?" she said unconcernedly.

"Mmm…hm," he hummed in response, licking his lips. "Your first mistake…" He fought to free his hands and pointed in the direction of the stairs when he had. "…that was upstairs. And your _second _mistake…uh-huh, _that _was what you just told me." He angled himself towards her and lunged forward. His chest collided with hers and she could see something different glinting in his eyes. It was something still so foreign and out of the ordinary than anything she'd seen before. "And now," he was hissing against her neck, "you're little…dilemma—it's only gotten that much more…complicated…" His arms had curled around her back, locking her against him. "Heeh…You're playing with fire," he said, his breath passing across her face. "See, I'm a guy who likes… for things to be a little…" He jerked her body in his grasp. "…different."

"Different…how?" she asked.

"_Monstrously _different." He looked up from her collarbone and grinned. "You're not gonna like that."

She laughed. In all the days he'd had her there with him, never once had she laughed. "Don't be so sure of yourself," she told him airily. He narrowed his eyes, but he smiled curiously at the sight of her contentedness.

"What are you…_laughing_ for? Nothing—nothing's funny…"

She took hold of his collar and pulled him into a kiss. A long-lasting, filling sort of kiss that made his heart twist and turn in his chest as he held himself back. If he could even make her bleed even the slightest bit, he could have been happy. "Eat your words, you hypocrite," she breathed against his lips. He scowled and maintained a steady frown as he thought of how he hated the fact that she thought he was under her control.

As she relinquished her grip on him, her fingers brushed against his neck.

Maybe he was. He laughed at the past, and how similar it was to Fana. _Useless._


	14. Chapter 13: The Most Rewarding Challenge

Chapter Thirteen: The Most Rewarding Challenge

Strawberry: I wish this could be a later chapter, but I want to specify that he has "makeup issues" following his first encounter, bare-faced, with Fana. So in order for that to work, this chapter is going to have to be sooner rather than later to my displeasure… Oh well. If it's too horrible, you guys can kill me once the story is over, but I think it'll be okay for the most part. :P

* * *

When she had rolled out from under him and climbed to her feet, his mind immediately—and regrettably—flitted to the door. Mentally beating himself, he stood and followed her out of the room, eager to know where she was thinking of going. She had left him with an unreadable sort of smile: perhaps as if to suggest or hint at something. All he could think was that it meant she was going to leave now that she'd softened him, even at the little amount she had. He shook his head violently to himself and let out a threshold of sounds to show his disapproval. She looked over her shoulder at him in response, still smiling. He walked faster until he noticed that she was turning right rather than left; she wasn't heading for the door.

Simmering, he slowed down, but continued to trail after her as she walked through the doorway to the food court. He reached up and took hold of the upper frame of the doorway with both hands, stretching his arms, then relaxing, ignoring the fact that he knew he was doing it in part to be sure she wasn't going to leave. He wondered if the collar of the uniform shirt had been so tight the entire day.

"I haven't eaten yet," she announced as she opened the door of the refrigerator. He ignored her and stared at the chipping framework at his sides. He could hear her voice, clear as a bell in his head, but when he glanced at her, her lips were not moving, and she was preparing some sort of shoddy food for herself. Why didn't she just…go? What was her reason for staying there? Was it just because there was no one else out there for her to be with? She didn't have parents—good ones at least—and she was more than old enough to have been living on her own; she looked to have been in her mid-twenties. She had no husband, either. He could easily put two and two together to figure that she probably didn't have even a potential husband at the time, or she _would _have tried to escape.

"Why aren't you going anywhere?" Fana turned to see him lounging in the doorway. He released the frame and crossed his arms momentarily, then seemed to decide against the position and strode thoughtfully towards her. She mulled his words over in her head, though they had not been complex. She remembered on the night she had first been captured, and how she had noticed that he had tied her up. Yet…the same night, he had expected her to sleep on a bench, completely unmonitored. She remembered having thought about how odd it was that he didn't seem concerned about her escape. Perhaps he had been doubly wondering about the opposite.

He leaned over the counter, folding his hands on the ceramic surface. He looked over at her lazily, though the air of expectancy radiated from him. "You've had four days of…opportunity," he said to her. "So…what are you still _doing _here?" He was biting his upper lip with a sort of ferocity that continued to show her his interest in the subject. Fana raised her face to the cabinets, her expression remaining empty, as though she were staring right through the wood to the contents within. She squinted mildly and tipped her head forward.

"Just lazy, I guess," she answered finally, with a shrug and a gaze of finality. As he breathed, he felt his heart slow as if he had been tremendously let down in his analysis of Fana's means for staying. As if in answer to his meager reaction, she smirked and said, "I'm kidding." He gave her a look of condemnation but smirked at the fact that she might have been learning something after all. "No, I haven't left because…" She ran her hands through her hair with a sigh and said, "Because it's better than the way I was living before. It's a boring apartment. It's all…creaky and faulty and stained up. There's nothing to do but watch TV. So my general life is sitcoms, invites to parties that I always turn down, and the restaurant. I never liked…people much. Simply because I guess I don't trust them." She took a bite from an apple she had chosen and chewed momentarily. "What's refreshing…is being with somebody who doesn't want to pretend they're worth your trust. It's a view of people I'll probably never have the opportunity to get again…if I tried to get away. To me, I'm not a hostage. I'm on an adventure."

She sunk her teeth into the apple again and the sound of the liquidy _crunch _plagued his ears with the loudness of bells tolling. After a moment, she offered it to him, hardly meeting his gaze at all.

"What do you want for me?" he asked, massaging his neck as he dodged her hand. "What are you…wishing would happen to me?"

"I want you to keep being realistic," she said, peeling a white sticker off the apple she was handling. "You _are _realistic. I think…you're smart enough to recognize the weakness of people and…well…" She tilted her head to the side, thinking of how to state her point without being offensive. She tried to ignore the way he was staring at her with such a craving. Part of her wanted him to let her be, but the rest of her wanted him to stay beside her and listen. "I think you just think about the weaknesses _too _much. And that's what turns you off from even being a human. It is kind of a turn off; I don't like all the downfalls we have either. But you're denying the good. And there is good, even if you've never seen it. Maybe…I just want to show you, and I want for you to be able to see. Because there's no sense in living if you can't see all the colors. A world with all negatives is a black and white painting. And as charming as those can be, you need a little color once and a while."

He knew there was no sense in living. That was why he didn't care to preserve himself.

"And…in order for that to happen…" He felt excessively uncomfortable as they stood so naturally beside one another, him leaning against the counter and her fixing the platter of food she was preparing. "What…do you want _from _me?"

Fana stopped toying with the food and turned her head swiftly towards him as if he had said something out of the ordinary. _Had _he? He sincerely doubted it; and even if he had, it meant nothing to him. "I want…" She pushed off of the counter and faced him, resting her hip against the edge. "I want you to try, even though this isn't what you want to do. Because I know it isn't. I think…well, I _think_, that if I were you…" The smile faded from her face. "I'd really hate Fana Williams right now."

"No…no, no, no, you got that part wrong," he corrected her deeply. "This isn't about…hatred…or some kind of…_bad _thing…" He shrugged. "I just don't wanna _do_ it, huh?"

"So you're going to fight me, is what you're saying," she interpreted.

"Yes. Of course I am. And I'm going to win."

"Well, then I'm already ahead in that case, aren't I?"

He smiled slyly. "Not at all, doll face. _I_…am ahead, to put it nicely."

"And what makes _you _ahead?"

"Because I'm _always _ahead. In…_everything_." He pushed his arms away from himself, his fingers still linked. "You may have a lead, kiddo…yeah…but that doesn't mean much. You see, _I'm _the authority. You're lucky…that you even got this far." He sighed mockingly and gave her a false look of care before changing it to his generalized hatred. "And let's just say…hah…you haven't even made a _dent_. Because you see, I do what _I _want, not what anyone else does. You think you're responsible for me…telling you something…but why _would_ you be? You think it's some…huge accomplishment; it's not. I told you because you asked, and if you had been anyone else…I still would've told you, just because…I'm good at sharing."

Nodding, as if it were her cue, she collected her apple and pile of pretzels on a plastic plate and edged away from the counter, locking his eyes. He watched her until he was unable to crane his head any more in her direction. Relinquishing his ideas, he stared at the countertop, feeling drained.

Fana heavily tired him out, just by being there at all.

"Hm. Hey." His voice was low and uncharacterized, and his generously smooth tone surprised her as she turned to see what he wanted. He looked the same as he had before: just as menacing and hate-filled. He always looked like he was enjoying the punch line of an inside joke constantly at the same time as all the negative expressions identified his face. "Come here," he said shortly, his voice having returned to its normal, devious sound. He twisted his neck before fixing his eyes on her again as she started towards him, plate in hand. She stopped in front of him, and he seemed entirely lost in thought for the first few minutes. Then he spoke, following a long sigh. "You know…you missed something. When you were saying what you wanted for me."

She raised her eyebrows. "I did?"

Fana was convinced that all of her organs had completely stopped functioning all at once when his fingers climbed to her face. It was the way he had done it, not the fact that he _had_. It was a gentle sort of touch, light and unforced—much different than how he had touched her face previously. He was tilting her head this way and that as if searching for something secret hidden in her skull. His brow furrowed, he put on a believable act of curiosity. "You want me…to be…" He seemed to be searching for the proper word. "Human…don't you?" She could hear gravel crunching together in his voice. He noticed how soft her eyes had gone, as if she had forgotten the question before it had even been asked. The skin of her cheeks was even and comfortable against his thumb while he trailed it across her cheekbone.

"Yes," she finally answered. The side of his mouth rose in a scheming smile.

"Uh-huh…" He touched her eyebrow with his index finger. "I didn't really have to ask you that…now _did _I?" She was not sure how he had gotten her so close to him; she hardly wanted to think she had gone of her own accord. "You don't just want my consent…_you_ want my…initiation." He had to lean forward only slightly in order to meet her lips, but he remained stationary. Biding his time, he chewed on the inside of his mouth as quietly as he could. She looked to have been completely unawares to him making any noise or motion whatsoever. "You want that?" he drawled.

"Yes," she replied. His grin widened.

"Say that for me. You want me to."

"I…_want _you to."

"Oh, what a fantastic suggestion! I'm thrilled you came up with…that." He inched forward and guided her closer to him in turn. "Come on…come on, _you _want it." He could feel her mouth against his and his heart gave a sickly thud. She started taking control, stepping further into his aura until she could positively feel him disapproving. He quickened pace, and she thought with a sense of irony that _this _would be the man whom she was allowing access to her affections. He started forward, forcing her backwards. Out of all people, a man whose name hardly existed at all; a man who was known as the Joker, and she was kissing him. Scars and everything. Couldn't there have been someone else?

Did she _want _it to have been someone else?

She was pinned against the wall. He had let go of her face, his hands creating a cage for her around her head as he pressed them against the concrete. He relinquished her lips, lifting his head slightly so that he was breathing across the center of her face. His breath was hot and powerful, as if he were shaking with some sort of raging feeling. She waited for him to move, impatiently leaving her hands at her sides. She knew she must have dropped something from her plate, but did not bother to check. She couldn't see what he was doing and did not bother opening her eyes to try.

Something cold and edged ran along her jawbone and down her neck. Breathing his air, she ignored it and continued to wait. His breath was transferred to her ear, feeling his mouth jovially touching it, perhaps even on accident by the way he changed pattern and moved it away. "Then if that's what you want," he started to whisper, still running whatever it was he was holding down Fana's neck. "You oughta be pretty satisfied right about now." He moved back sharply, and her eyes flew open like shutters. "Getting a few more _leads_…corrr-_rect_?" The object he was holding was removed from her skin; he lifted it to her face.

A knife glimmered in front of her, and behind it, he looked entirely pleased.

"I said I like things different," he said, switching the blade closed and heading out of the room. "Can't say I didn't warn you." Gaping, Fana stared at the doorway for what must have been minutes before returning her attention to the food on her plate. In that amount of time, she had lost all need for food.

"You won't go down without a fight, huh?" she muttered to herself, watching him stretch through the concession window. When he had been reaching his arms over his head for a moment, he let them swing down to his sides briefly before picking them up again and holding the sides of his head. He pulled his head downward, then forced it to the side. Then he shook his head childishly and smiled to himself, perfectly aware that she was still glaring at him. She turned away, annoyed. "That's fine. A challenge is more rewarding."


	15. Chapter 14: Sleeping Dogs

Chapter Fourteen: Sleeping Dogs

Strawberry: OK. Imagine me walking into a theater at midnight, having no idea what the Dark Knight is about. Now imagine me walking out and saying, "I have to write a story!" And out pops Fana banana in the middle of the street. Well, the first chapter goes down the day following, focusing on Harvey Dent's fundraiser. And then immediately after, I get all the character development, and the scene at the end of THIS chapter came to me. Basically, I've thought of this as a way to show that they're important to each other, but identify Fana's character more correctly and keep the Joker in character. So I'm happy it's time to share it. I hope you like it too ^_^

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By the time the next hour had rolled around, he had managed to escape Fana's watch and reapply his makeup. Her first thoughts were of anger and displeasure at the fact that their encounter must not have meant much if he was willing to go straight back to the way things were. Was he just stringing her along, making her believe that she was going to change him? Had he already worked on a mental and emotional barrier that would render her efforts completely useless? She remained silent when he asked what was "getting her down." She was hoping that he would pick up the vibes and understand that it was somewhat depressing to know that he'd gone upstairs for the specific purpose of morphing into a clown again.

Fana thought about what it was that bothered her most about him painting his face again. At first, she had simply thought that it was because she had thought they had gained an understanding of one another—a bare kind of truthful understanding. But perhaps she cared for a different reason, and she could not decide whether it was because she was comfortable with the scars or she wasn't. There was nothing particularly…frightening about them, so she had to admit that they were disturbing in their own way. _Not really "their own way"_, she corrected herself. _More like…EVERY way. _And she felt guilty the minute she had thought it. But even if that were the case, why was she preferring that the makeup be left off? Vaguely, she thought it to be because it made him even less human than his internal side gave off. Her goal was to turn him back into the person she believed he must have been. It was like blowing up a huge building: it's gone until all the wreckage is torn away. And at that point, another building could be built in its place.

"You look a little…uneasy…"

Fana jumped as she felt a pair of hands sliding down her arms from behind. She had been standing before the television, debating about whether or not she would sit around and watch something or try to find something more productive to do. There weren't many options. "What's a' matter, doll _face_?" he asked in a whisper, accentuating the final word of his sentence. The side of his face was pressed against her ear when he gave a miniscule gasp that held an air of confrontational excitement. "You don't like my face," he told her without any sort of questioning aspect to his voice. "So…alright, so, let's see here…" He clenched fists around her fingers and pulled her arms up and around so that she was hugging herself—_he _was hugging her. "We've established that you want me to be…human…huh?" He drew his head back, his hair tickling the nape of her neck. "And—and you think that…I'm a _better _human with_out _the makeup, is that it?" He had more room to throw himself more deceitfully against her. She could feel his chest pushing and receding behind her as he took heavy, long breaths. "You're a pretty thing. You oughta know what other pretty things look like." He leaned over slightly, and she crumpled under him, her knees buckling, but he caught her with a jerk. "And these scars, girly girl…" he hissed, "are _not _very pretty…"

"You're judging yourself," she said breathily as he squeezed her lungs.

"'Scuse me?" he prodded, holding onto her with still more force.

"You're _judging _yourself," she repeated. "And you can't do that, because we judge ourselves based on the way we think…or the frame of mind we're in. And you…" She wriggled herself out of his grip enough so that she could speak without difficulty. "You hold yourself in the frame of mind that you're this…gigantic freak and horrible person and I think _you _think that you deserved to have the scars. I think that you _would _be different if you thought anyone would accept you. You think everyone hates you, right? And that's not true. People are afraid of you right now because you're a criminal. If you would just be…whoever you really are…no one will cast you out, like you think they will."

His forehead wrinkled as he considered what she had said. She had used good reason and good observation, but there was no possible way that she had been correct. He knew himself best and he always would no matter what Fana did to try to get inside of his mind. Then again, she couldn't have been completely inaccurate. Fana wasn't a stupid person. He had always considered himself to have taken much time in analyzing his own thoughts and feelings—or lack there of. But there was the possibility that he had…given up? Was that the right word?

"And what if I say you're wrong?" he teased, rocking her lightly to the right, then the left in a continuous pattern.

"Then I'll call you a liar," she replied. He laughed.

"You're a conniving little thing, aren't ya?" He stood her up properly and straightened his violet jacket that had replaced the officer uniform he had been wearing. Presumably, he had changed at the same time he had redone his makeup. He took a moment to blink in a prolonged fashion as he rested against the arm of the couch. When his eyes opened, he looked as if he were being forced into something that he was accepting mildly, but still resented. His eyes were dark and glittering, and she was certain he had never looked so serious. Neither of them spoke as he looked at her, shoulders slouched and grim expression intact. She tried to search his thoughts, but could barely come close to interpreting the look on his face. "…I didn't kill the mayor," he said at last, as if feigning pride, but his ashamed nature gave him away. "In case…you were wondering." Fana simply stared, and he wondered gravely if he had wasted his breath on something he had thought would matter. But the knot in his chest was quickly unfastened when she nodded slowly.

"But you were planning to," she confirmed, raising her eyebrows. He scowled.

"And _there _he is, still walkin' around just perfectly fine!" he hollered, swinging his arms to the side as a visual aid. "Now isn't that what _matters_?" Fana crossed her arms over her chest and sighed.

"_Maybe_," she said. Immediately shifting her gaze, she sat down on the couch so that he was elevated far above her. "You wanna tell me what happened?"

"Ah…hm." He considered it, thinking over what he ought to have told her about it. Then, deciding on a discreetly formulated answer, he raised his hands with uncertainty and in a shrug, said, "We missed."

"Details."

He let out a long breath. "I'm not _good_ with details," he told her, continuing immediately at the sight of her narrowed eyes. "I'll _do my best_…so I had this…idea…see, I like to unsettle people. Just a little. And so…" He put the palms of his hands together. "I went for the mayor. I took some…officers' uniforms, huh? And I gave 'em to my…team-muh. So we're in disguise, at the mayor's ceremony. There's some…some, uh, _gun_ salute, and we have a couple of rifles, right? So during that we just…" He turned, swiveling his hips in an angled direction and imitated a gunshot. "…_piv_oted a little, if you will…and we fired the shots, and…like I said: we missed."

"Okay," she said, sounding at ease. Though he was doing his best to convey an attitude of comfort, he was as nervous as he had ever been. "I'm glad…that he's not dead. Can I ask…" She put her hand on his forearm and he was forced to look away to ignore his human traits. "What made you want to tell me about that?" His forehead wrinkled, and the muscles in his arm tensed as he thought about whether it would injure his reputation with her too much if he gave her the truth. "Why did you want me to know that he wasn't dead?"

_The truth? _he thought pensively. _Maybe_. "See…well…" He could hardly piece his thoughts together properly enough to get the words out. "I just…I just wanted to let you know." Fana stood up much to his surprise. He couldn't read her emotions because now, she was getting smarter. It was funny, the way she was there, thinking that she was changing _him_, when in fact, it was the other way around entirely. Still, he felt slightly unsettled without being able to understand her emotions.

He was completely conflicted. Though she found it perplexing, she was pleased at the fact that he had shown a noticeable change just since earlier that day. Of course _he _wasn't going to admit it, but that wasn't what she needed. All she needed was the knowledge that she was going to be successful, and he was showing her that she would be. She grinned at him, and again he thought about the way she hadn't shown him her smile previously. It was a new side of Fana Williams. He almost liked the mellower side better. No, not almost: he _definitely_, fully, and completely liked it better. "I'm glad that you told me," she said, giving his shoulder a light punch skeptically. She watched for his reaction, but he only rocked silently back and forth at the movement and stared. "Gives me a few more leads."

Then he stood. "It doesn't—"

"Accept that for me, can't you?"

Of course he couldn't.

By the time the full night had taken over, he had given up the strategic pacing he had been doing around the first floor. Purposefully, and with an air of annoyance, he passed the bench where Fana lay several times. The first time he crossed the room, he determinedly kept his gaze locked frontally on the ice rink. He walked around in the food court for a series of minutes, thinking about nothing and everything at the same time. It was one of those feelings that was so seldom stumbled upon that he had forgotten that it existed. He had never allowed any confliction to plague is mind for a long period of time; he had always ruled it out by thinking of something funny, or turning his thoughts _into _a humorous thing. He could find the humor in anything—it was the one thing he truly did pride himself in.

The second time he passed Fana, he gave her a complimentary glance, though she was fast asleep. The flesh of her face was smashed against the wood frame and her arm dangled lazily off the surface. He looked forward again, envisioning a lengthy scene in which Fana waited until he went to sleep and took the opportunity to escape. He determined that she must have been lying; she couldn't have wanted an adventure so badly. She was a _human _and he wasn't. He was better, of course, because he knew how to live the right way. She deserved, if anything, only the credit of being willing to listen when she needed to. But she could be stubborn. She could be unfeeling, and that was the sort of grace she didn't deserve. _Fana Williams…is not allowed to leave_, he thought to himself.

The third and final time he passed her, he froze in his strides and positively gawked at her. She hadn't moved or done anything out of the ordinary. The backs of her fingers were quietly resting against the concrete floor. He turned toward her and lifted his leg to take a step, but immediately backtracked. _No time for silly emotions_, he reminded himself. It was about the specific situating to which he would severely punish himself for letting his mind be a war field. His mind was about the fun; it _couldn't _be something chaotic or estranged. Several necessary things needed to be righted as a whole in order for him to be himself, and being himself was… "What I like _best_," he finished aloud in a rusted whisper, succumbing to the smirk that longed to grace his twisted mouth.

Crashing the toe of his shoe against the floor, he hummed a pleased fit of vocal tension. He mentally scolded himself as he gave in to the sinking feeling in his chest that dragged him towards her until he was looking at her from a birds-eye view. Strands of her hair were dancing down her shoulder blades, her bare back for once an object of his vision. In the norm, her long, tangled red hair covered the area that her blue dress left uncovered. But not now that it was all scooped off to the side across her shoulders. He stretched his fingers as if in a muscle exercise, trying to avoid that boiling feeling of desire that he could feel pricking at his organs.

He raised his eyebrows, surprising even himself, and let himself fall into a sitting position beside the bench. His legs were propped up, enabling him to lounge restlessly against himself. He simply sat there, soaking in that central feeling that she gave him, the sort that made him recognize that he _didn't _know what he wanted and he _didn't _know himself. It was the fact that she was such a…a _nuisance _of a woman compared to the rest. She couldn't have just played along and gone all out of her mind for a while. She couldn't have been so easily changed into a murderous little girl; she couldn't even give him the thrill of trying to escape. It wasn't the strugglers he hated, because _everyone _was a struggler. Everyone except Fana Williams. "It's not the strugglers," he repeated aloud.

It was the ones who stayed. Fana was the only one who had stayed.

Almost as though he had lost mental control of his physical actions, he rocked forward slightly, shifting his weight so that he was close enough to smell Fana's hair. Before he achieved any further nearness, he sharply drew back, widening his eyes in disgust. He started to get to his feet, but stopped when her breathing increased in volume for the shortest of seconds. At that moment, he had to shake his head free of the feeling of comfort her easy breathing gave to him.

Without breaking his sight of her, he lowered himself back to the ground and lie flat on his back, his face pointed upward to parallel hers. The delicate curving of her face lay completely still, but for the seldom moments in which her eyelids quivered slightly. He lay there, wondering if she was having a dream or not. He wondered as he folded his hands across his chest pensively, the paint on his face feeling like a weight in the simple night. Fana didn't like it.

He drifted, and as he did so, he thought in a fit of rage about how he _wanted _her to like it.

Fana woke in the night in response to a stabbing in her back from her faulty positioning on the bench. With a low grunt of discomfort, she rubbed her eyes testily and started to shift herself but received a pang in the chest at what she saw before she had even gotten the chance to move.

There, below her lying flat on his back, was the Joker, not there to greet her or frighten her. He was fast asleep, she judged by the way his lips were slack and his mouth was gently parted. The makeup had not been removed from his scarred face, but it didn't perturb her, even unsettle her the tiniest bit. She hardly had to give it a second thought before she had stood up and stepped over his legs at his side. She thought of his reasoning for sleeping there beside her when she knew him to have a bed that was probably comfortable and spacious. Why would he have chosen to sleep on the floor? She tried her best to not feel pompous as she thought vaguely that maybe he was softening, lightly becoming something more than his monstrous self.

She slid onto the stoned floor at his side and silently thanked him.

He came to at a point when sunbeams were escaping the boards over the window. Turning his head, the first thing he saw was Fana's face angled toward him, but not from the direction he had left himself at when he made to sleep. She had, at some point, recognized his whereabouts and climbed down to join him. There was a brief moment where he felt as if warm water had been poured over his head. For perhaps the first time, he genuinely appreciated Fana Williams. Not because she was an easy subject, and not because she wasn't a struggler.

It was because she was there.


	16. Chapter 15: Always Smiling

Chapter Fifteen: Always Smiling

Strawberry: Do you wanna know why I wrote this chapter? The scars are too easy. You can't savor all the little…_emotions._ XD Okay, I'm done. Anyways, this chapter really accentuates the way they both have changed slightly, whether or not either of them admit it. Fana is obviously in better spirits now that she's "taken him under her wing" if you will. It's a matter of how they react to one another. It's quite a…chemical sort of reaction in my opinion. :P Enjoy!

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The meaningless, gleeful smile that remained on his face made her wonder just what went on in his head. He was lounging on the couch, never removing his glare from her while she stood with only slight movement before him. "Do you know something, Fana banana?" he asked with a loafing tone. Before even catching the slightest glimpse of her attention, he went on to say, "There are _no _pictures in here." She simply stared, her fiery eyes plaguing him unwontedly. "And I'm a, uh…hah, a _creative _man, if you will…I need a little light in my life. Hm?" He nodded to her, raising his eyebrows and puffing out his lower lip to ask if she agreed but she didn't take the bait. "What's on your mind, doll face?" he said dully. "You're being qui-_et_."

She sighed and pursed her lips momentarily, wondering if it mattered enough to inquire after. Shrugging, she said, "I woke up last night, and I saw you on the floor…you were sleeping. I was thinking that you were probably uncomfortable. And you have…somewhere more comfortable to sleep." Without any warning, he shot forward, throwing himself violently into a sitting position. He looked dumbfounded for a moment until he burst into a fit of laughter. Clutching at his sides, he felt his stomach muscles tense.

"I don't—I don't care about _comfort_," he said through his amusement. Catching sight of her disapproval, he sighed submissively and calmed himself. "So what's your point, doll face?"

"I woke up…and you were this close to me." She imitated the distance with her hands.

"And I woke up _next_ to you," he added with a smile. "Maybe we're just…lucky." As she breathed, Fana made a light "whooshing" sound with her lips and massaged her temples. He clutched his ribcage as he made eye contact with her and asked, "Are you _that _concerned with _my _welfare?" He nodded as if to answer for her. "Tell me what you're so _worried _about." Lifting his arms and batting them around his head, he depicted the picture of some sort of mind-blowing action. "Give me an idea…huh? Give me…_something_." He watched her curiously until he was certain she had no idea what to say.

As she stood there absently, her eyes flitting between him and her surroundings, which shouldn't have been anything new to her. The television wasn't on, and there wasn't even one mild temptation or distraction that should have occupied her attention. But there she stood, looking around the room as if she had never been there before; as if she hadn't spend the last five days of her life with full view of that room. He stared at her in wonder, trying to discover what she had found to be so interesting. Very consciously, he peered around the room, puckering and gnawing at his mouth as he looked. As vibrant and strong as alcohol or some life-threatening drug, he could taste the metallic paint slapped across his mouth, defining him. Fana didn't like it, he recalled from the day before. Even with that in mind, he didn't care the least bit, knowing well that he was who he was no matter what the past dictated.

Unless, of course, his past was the reason he was who he was.

"I just wondered why you chose to sleep there," came her voice, sparring with the determination he was wielding. "Or if you didn't choose to, what were you even doing there?" He smiled at her overboard suspicions.

"Ah, so you know what you're doing after all," he started with a smirk. "You sound a little suspicious…yeah? Am I righ-t?" He raised his eyebrows and leaned back again. "Mm, _yeah_, remember…when I said that you shouldn't trust me?" She narrowed her eyes, trying to think what he was referring to until her thoughts rested on the previous morning. Slowly, creating a swirl of anticipation, she nodded. "Oh, good!" he said expressively. "Good, good, good, I thought you _forgot_. Would you look at the way a man gets _sucked _free of power when there's a woman around…hahaha!" He sat up again and journeyed to the opposite end of the couch, pushing his abdomen against the cushions as he draped his arms over the arm. Instantly catching her attention, his tongue slid over his mouth. "You see, I'm _telling _you…that you should take a _little _more care, huh? Don't be so…_willing_…" He licked his lips get again and nodded. "You'll be eaten alive."

"I'm not suspicious," she said defensively. He turned his head to the side with a, "Tch," followed by more silence on his part. "I just said I was…curious."

"And curiosity killed the cat," he murmured just loudly enough for her to hear.

"Stop." His face turned to half-mocking disbelief, though in the pit of his stomach, there was no mocking at all. Fana's tone had gone gaunt and hollow as though she were…angry. He managed to chuckle for a moment before she went on. "You're completely ignoring what I'm saying to you. Now stop, or else I won't be able to hold a conversation with you."

"Oh, what a terrible fate!" he joked plainly, rolling his eyes. "Lemme tell you something. Not _everything _has this…little…_deeper meaning _thing you keep looking for…everywhere you go. Especially not the things _I _do because…" He shook his head, his jaw sliding around sloppily. "I have no motives, Fana ba…_nana_. I have no…no _plan _like the rest of you. Y'know, I just _do _things. Like a dog chasing cars." Fana considered his words and disagreed as soon as she could find an argument. Opening her mouth to protest, she silenced herself at the sight of his weary eyes wrestling for her cooperation. "I slept there because…you were just _there_. That's how everything is, and someone's gotta teach you that sooner or later. Sometimes when things are there, I…mold myself into the situation, _into _the storyline. Because I love a little limelight. I was there because you were there. Ooh, how _romantic_…" He laughed largely. "You have motives, though," he accused darkly as he simmered. "You tell _me_ why you ended up on the floor beside me…no telling…ha, _you_ had a reason…"

Fana looked down at her hands, each one swinging loosely at her sides. Raising one to her face, she contemplated whether or not she knew at all why she had gone down beside him when she awoke ahead of him. She remembered the way it had made her feel like he was closer to her, more in terms of humanity than anything else. Maybe she had had no reason, and was only acting impulsively, perhaps to say the least.

With a rush of wind, the door opened and a hurried clown who was hunched over as he power walked. At the sound of the heavy door opening, Fana looked in that direction as if expecting the Joker to have already been there, pushing the man out of the way. But looking back at him on the couch, he had his head craned simply in that direction as if he had highly expected the entrance. Knowing him—or rather, _not _knowing him—there was definite margin for the fact that he _might _have expected it. Fana returned her attention to the crony and cringed at the way he noticed them in the room. As he walked, his strides slowed, but not before he did some sort of disbelieving double take. At the sight of the Joker, he gave a sharp nod of respect and exited the area, his destination quite obviously being the upstairs hallway.

He was looking at her before she had looked back at him. Nothing needed to be said because there was nothing _to _say. It was simply a happening, just like it had been a happening that it had been Fana who stepped out to defend Rachel. There was no meaning or pattern; it was just something that happened.

"Because I like who could be." He had to rack his brains for whatever the previous question had been. "I like who you _are_, even though…I honestly don't want you to stay that way." There was expectancy in her eyes as she waited for him to reply. He smacked his lips together, mulling over his ideas only to find that he didn't _have _any.

"All right, I'll throw you a bone," he said exasperatedly. "I like you back, doll face."

Fana never responded to his words but to lower herself onto the arm of the couch, forcing him to draw his torso back to avoid being sat on. Almost offended that she couldn't have chosen a better location, he gawked at her stony glare that was fixated on seemingly nothing in particular. He scratched his scalp deftly with one finger and found smaller means of distraction until she spoke again. "Can you help me understand something?" she asked him. Turning his head away so that he could smile without putting her out, he thought of how wondrous it was to know that she was not only listening: she was seeking.

"Probably," he answered realistically, toying numbly with the chain on his belt loop. Fana sighed as if preparing herself for the battlefield. He snickered.

"You said…you were the one who cut yourself the last time it happened," she said vaguely, aware that she was treading on dangerous ground. Whereas previously he had been looking off sensibly in another direction, at her words, he turned and stared at the wall across from the couch, his expression taut with harnessed anger. She swallowed and continued. "Can I…hear what made you do it? Did she…push you that far?"

He stood up as if prompted by a spring. Fana stood along with him defensively, ready to remain stabilized. "_She_ asked for it," he answered defiantly. "Hah…don't _pin _this on me…" He pushed past her, striding idly to the wall where a table was lined.

"No, I'm not." Fana trailed after him. "I just thought—"

"_You _don't know the things she sai-d," he accused, resting his forehead against the wall so that he was not facing her. "Mm, see, I had no _choice_, Fana banana. Well…hah…maybe I did. But she needed a lesson, and at that point…I had to be the teacher."

He felt Fana embracing him cautiously from behind. He sneered at the blank wall, shaking his head darkly. "I did this for _her_," he said, his voice empty. "Call it the mark of a madman—still there, so it might as well be—but I didn't think there was anything else to do. She just needed to be taught a little…she just needed to know that such superficial things didn't matter. Not even the _pain _mattered, but shouldn't it have mattered more…that I would've done it? As a human, of course—it should've mattered to her as a _human_. And maybe I never should've married one. Hah…" He pressed his hands firmly against the wall, letting his weight fall solely on the muscles of his arms. Fana still did not let go of him, though he wished more than anything she had just gone away.

He wished it because he liked her. He had a fondness for her. And the Joker didn't do fondness.

"They carve her face," he mused awkwardly. Fana tightened her grip around his waist, wishing that would admit it to himself that he wasn't so different. He always compared himself to _people _as if he wasn't one. And then, he would turn around and say that everyone was the same and nothing really mattered. _So if believed that everyone was the same, _she told him mentally, _you wouldn't think yourself so different. _"And we have no money for surgeries," he said, allowing himself no regret or remorse for the memory. He hated memories. And when he remembered them…it was only because he had learned to see the funny side. "She can't take it…I just wanna see her smile again." He turned around, viciously forcing away Fana's arms. He rested his elbows behind him on the tall-legged table that stood there and tilted his head curiously to the left. Observing her for a moment—the way her arms still hovered towards him as if she hoped he would accept her again—he squeezed her face in his hand, pulling it towards him and downward. "Hm?" he said, then forcing her to meet his gaze. "I just want her to know that I don't _care _about the scars."

"You were trying to identify with her," she concluded, but he only shook his head. "Then—"

"So…" he interrupted, giving her neck a jerk. "I stick a razor in my mouth and do _this_…" He smacked his lips together, making those eccentric movements that accentuated the scars. He turned his head to the right and then the left so that she could see each side very clearly, though he knew she'd already had an eye-full. "…To myself…and you know what?" His heart gave a sickening clench as though someone had ripped it from his body and was toying with it. "And you know…_wh_-at?" he hissed, the "H" making a whipping sound. He gave Fana's face a shake and she finally moved her hands up to his wrist, hardly placing any pressure on it, but obviously ready to attempt throwing him off of her. "She can't stand the _sight _of me. She _leaves_…And now…" Her eyes were glittering with compassion; he hated it, but walked through the waters as if it were something he could never part with. He released her, subdued, and she could see his entire expression soften. "I see the funny side…" When he exhaled, an entire piece of him seemed to leave him on the expelled air. "Now…I'm always smiling…"

"If you can remember something like that, and still feel that strongly," said Fana blindly, "Then, no. You aren't always smiling." She reached for him once more, at first to unseeing eyes. He tore his gaze in the other direction scathingly, hating the way she was executing such _power_ and she was human. _Maybe_, he thought, giving in. _Maybe there's a way to be human and still be powerful_. He sighed and outstretched his arms as if it were a terrible task and she immediately pressed into him, holding him close as his hands rested stupidly on her back. _Heh…and neither of which…I care about being. I don't need anything. I don't need anyone. I don't _need _a…pointless classification._

"Do you miss her?" she said, massaging the back of his head. He considered it briefly.

"…Yes," he answered, and she felt his fingers tense against the small of her back. She buried her head in his neck, noticing the way that he didn't carry the dirty odor of the Joker that night. He had a spiced scent; it may have been the reason that the first sight she'd seen of him that day had been of him walking through the icehouse door. Would he have gone out for some kind of cologne or soap? She doubted it, but the way he smelled…it was cooling and steaming at the same time, making her nostrils tingle from its intensity.

She knew that his wife—whoever she was—was still out there. She wondered if he ever thought of that and if it contributed at all to how he felt. "Good," she cooed into his ear. "Good…"

The thing about Fana was that she had some kind of mystifying aura, he decided. She didn't just _be_, or just _exist_ physically…she did the same thing internally with her emotions. By and by, it wasn't as though he wished that he were the same way. It was more that he cared about discovering her as he assumed she did about him. More than anything, it enraged him to know that he couldn't fight back against emotions. He could avoid them, shun them, and let them bound off his chest for as long as he pleased. But he couldn't avoid hers and what they did to him. She was…winning. Only so far, granted, but she was.

Stupid, _stupid_…perfect Fana.


	17. Chapter 16: Boss's Fancy

Chapter Sixteen: Boss's Fancy

Strawberry: No Fana, mostly cronies, and a little Joker. Maybe boring? But DEFINITELY necessary, and I think you'll understand where it's leading :P

* * *

In the upstairs ammunition room, Joseph Marley sat thoughtfully between the rows of gas drums. When the Joker had first conned him into working for him, Joseph had been walking on the eggshells each time he entered the icehouse. It made him uncomfortable to know that a mad murderer dressed as a clown was walking around in a building with ready-to-use weapons. What if the guy just went off one day and decided to blow the place with all of them in it? It would have been something he would most definitely do, given the way he conveyed his plans to them. Joseph recalled his confrontation with the mob; they had been waiting outside in the car while he went in, jacket loaded with explosives. The man was willing to blow himself up just to punish _them_. He didn't like to live very much. He didn't particularly like to die, either, Joseph thought. The Big Boss didn't like much of anything. He didn't _need _to.

"Hey, Joe," called his buddy from across the room. Andy pulled on a loose chain unreasonably hung from the ceiling, his gaze fixed curiously on the wall opposite him. Joseph had known that Andy hadn't gotten half so comfortable with the idea of all the ammunition in their quarters. "Boss say anything to you about today?" Andy asked. "'Bout plans?"

"Nah," Joseph answered, sprawling out on the ground and shoving his hands lazily behind his head. "You ask me, he's pissed over what happened yesterday." Andy looked puzzled for a moment, then his mouth turned to a small "O" of understanding.

"You mean with the mayor," he supposed.

"That's the one."

"Huh." Andy's eyes were still darting indefinitely between the rows of drums. "Saw him go out this morning, though." Joseph's ears perked.

"Yeah?" he said questioningly. "Wonder what he didn't tell us for…"

"Probably 'cause of that girl," Andy responded. Joseph sat up at this point, narrowing his eyes.

"What girl?"

"You know, the carrot top." Andy scratched his head as if trying to remember something. Then he snapped his fingers and said, "Fana Williams. That's her name. Remember that party of ol' Harvey Dent's? Back when we were _supposed _to be doing him in. Well, he took Fana hostage, 'cause he wanted to bait in our buddy, the D.A. _That _sure didn't work." Joseph nodded, reminiscing how that night had been for him. He wanted more than anything for Harvey to get it, but for no particular reason. Other than the fact that he should've gotten the mob's money. And with the mob in trouble, how were they gonna locate it? _Boss will think of something_, he thought to himself, knowing that the Joker was insane, but he knew how to get what he wanted.

"The carrot top…" Joseph mused absent-mindedly. "She's cute." Andy's jaw dropped.

"You're kidding!" he exclaimed as his right leg thudded against one of the drums. He jumped slightly before continuing. "She's a big mess. Her hair is all…" He whirled his hands around his head chaotically. "_Everywhere_. She looks all…unsettled, and such." Joseph scowled, hardly concerned, but on the verge of defense. Andy just wasn't thinking.

"She's been in an icehouse for, what, five days? Six?" Joseph proposed. "She was pretty when she got here," he added in muffled tones.

"I don't know, man," Andy prodded. "She looks kinda like a…a clown; that's what I think. Hair's all wild and orange like that." He gave a short laugh, quite obviously amusing himself. Joseph rolled his eyes and fooled with the clown mask beside him, admiring the way he knew it to fit over his bearded face so well. "Isn't that ironic, right?" Andy continued. "You got a thing for clowns." Joseph sighed at Andy's immense stupidity. "I'd make some crack about you and the boss, but I already know how he rolls." At that point, Joseph's attention was sparked.

"What are you talkin' about?" he snapped in his curiosity. Andy knelt down in front of him, checking the door as if afraid that the Joker himself was standing right in the hallway. He might have been; unless Joseph's suspicions about what Andy would say next were rational.

"I saw him kissin' up on her," he whispered, still throwing looks over Joseph's shoulder. "That hostage girl."

"No kidding!" Joseph said in disbelief, but purely aware that it could have easily happened at some point. It was just that the Big Boss was so…eccentric. Could he have been wrong about the boss not liking anything at all? Maybe there was an exception, and maybe that exception was Fana Williams. More likely still, he didn't like her at all, but a man had his needs. "Guess we can't be too surprised over that," Joseph said pensively. "He may be a little off his rocker, but he's still got the same needs any other man was built with, eh?" He massaged his forehead as if the information had given him a headache. "Well, don't leave me hangin'. That's somethin' worth listening to. When'd you see 'em?"

"Just yesterday," Andy replied, his excitement visible in his blotchy face. "He wasn't wearin' no makeup still; guessing that was because we'd just got back from the commissioner's funeral. And I figure, he was probably waiting 'til that day came around, 'cause he would wanna kiss Fana without being all made up." Joseph cringed at the thought. "They was in the food court. Remember I came inside after you guys? I guess they were somewhere else when you all went upstairs when we got in."

"Mhm, yeah, I saw 'em sitting on the couch when I came in," Joseph added. "They weren't talking or anything. Or…looking at each other. Well, she was looking at him. But I didn't pay too much attention. Wanted to get to the buffet he promised us, you know?" He laughed dryly and Andy followed suit.

"Well, like I was saying," he said. "I don't know if I would say that Fana's just his plaything. Looks like she doesn't mind all too much, but there could easily be some kinda plan brewin' in her head. But still…" He leaned in closer, lowering his voice even more. "Well, here's the gist: she was up against the wall and such and he looked like he was gonna straight up take a bite outta her. She was holding some…food or something, but otherwise her hands were free and she could've easily gotten out of that one. But like I said, she might just be planning something, even though I can't see how she could be. I wasn't gonna stick around and watch, but the way it was going, she was having herself a fine time."

"So…sounds like he might—"

"Well, hello there."

Both of his men turned, quite obviously in surprise as if terribly startled, and immediately scrambled to their feet upon seeing him. The one on the right, plump and red-faced—Andy, he believed—was letting off a bout of reckoning words before he had even said anything. Staring at him as he blatantly ranted on, he felt compelled to reach to the desk beside him where a glinting silver gun was rested. Taking it in his hands and observing it momentarily, he cocked it and pointed it directly at Andy, who jumped in upset. "Sss_immer_ down, boys," he said unconcernedly as Andy whimpered like a wounded dog. He adjusted his suit with carefree intentions to raise the tension circulating in the room; it was quite liberating. "Now." He waggled the gun slightly and pointed it towards himself, examining its makeup and formation. Then, he returned it to Andy. "You know I'm not big on _guns_," he reminded them with ease. Joseph was mounted firmly on the ground. "So, when I say guns are too quick…" Giving Andy one last glare, he tossed the gun on the ground behind him. "…You'll know that I won't _use _one on you."

The men were still petrified, as if the mere sight of the gun had deeply shaken them, which should not have been the case, given the tasks they'd previously completed for him. In the back of his mind, he considered picking it up again just for kicks, but he didn't want to use the same trick twice. "So," he said pleasantly, flicking open one of his knives and twisting it around in his hand. Andy watched him nervously, but Joseph did not look phased. "How are you gentle_men_ doing on this _fine _day? Hm?" he asked. Without waiting for an answer, he began pacing between the rows of drums. "Huh. Let's wind the clocks back to, say…yesterday morning. We're all standing outside, waiting for the _chaos _to ensue." He nodded. "And I was _thin_-king… Someone's missing…aren't they?" His eyebrows raised, the creases in his forehead prominent and accusatory.

Andy remained frozen where he stood, but Joseph straightened posture and lowered his head grimly. "We lost Schiff."

He cocked his head to the side. "Yes, Joey boy," he said sarcastically. "I know that. I _mean_…" He licked his lips in a smacking sound, following it with a look of severity. "He's not back-kuh. And he should be."

"Sir, it's only been—"

"Wasn't it you…who I told not to call me that?" he said scathingly.

"_Boss_," Joseph corrected himself. "I gotta say, it's only been a day. He'll probably turn up."

He stretched his neck forward disbelievingly. He looked down at a rickety wooden table beside the drums and slammed his hand down on the surface, his knife chinking and sending a metallic sound through the room. "You _gotta _say, huh?" he repeated, near boiling point from sheer annoyance. "Let's clarify a…couple of things. One: I'm not concerned with _anyone's_ welfare, much less a discardable clown…mheh…and two: if I say he should be back by now…that's something you accep_t_. And Thomas Schiff ought to be here. But if he's not…" He gestured to each of the men in turn. "That's no concern of mine." Neither Joseph nor Andy moved the slightest bit, making him squint at them, internally willing them to have enough sense to understand. When they remained stationary, he sighed and waved his hand. "We're finished here," he told them commandingly, grinning suggestively at the knife he had left on the table. At his recognition of it, Andy switched his gaze back and forth between him and the knife. "Have a wonderful afternoon, gentlemen," he said smartly. "I'll be seeing you…" And with that, he headed light-heartedly to the door, tracing the melody in his head with his index finger in the air.

"So, uh…how's the, uh…how's the hostage?"

He stopped in his tracks, halfway out of the room. The scratchy carpet was all he could see at the angle his head hung. As his fists shifted, the leather of his gloves made a low sound that seemed to carry throughout the room. Without shifting his overall position, he craned his neck to look at the doorframe over his shoulder. They were not in his view, but he didn't need or want them to be. He wondered what had made Joseph ask at all. Instantly, he came to the conclusion that they had been thinking, and regardless of what they had been thinking about, trying to use their brains at all was a bad idea.

He looked around at them, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "_Fan_-tastic," he said through bared teeth. He turned again and rounded down the hallway, leaving the men to their questions; he knew they had them.


	18. Chapter 17: Sometimes

Chapter Seventeen: Sometimes

Strawberry: "Understanding the Joker." If this was a one-shot (well, the beginning part), that's what I'd call it. In-depth with his wife, his thoughts, and how she, in turn, brought him to where he was in TDK. Sorry it's such a long chapter… Playing the song "Tearjerker" by Korn during this chapter is REALLY effective, I think. The link is on my profile if you want to open it in another window and press play while you read :] P.S. I watched The Shining during the beginning of this chapter, and Jack Nicholson's character is just…phew. It helped me write from a bit of an insane perspective. I wonder if it worked? Read and review so I know if it's good ^_^

* * *

Clear as the day, he could see her face in his mind, swarming there as his wife's face used to. Her marred, deformed face, better then it had been compared to the way it was right after Alec Savage had done it. He remembered how much of a pathetic case he had been, sitting by her side in the hospital, cradling her hand unsteadily. He wasn't sure if he had loved her at all, but he gathered that it might have been his lack of feeling those days. Whether or not there had been that timeless connection between them, he remembered only the truth of the day. When he had laid eyes on her after they had cleaned her and stitched her up, she was still the same, demented girl that she had been. Demented _woman_, classifying by the way she used him as her husband.

Sex. That was all he really remembered. That was all she had ever wanted. That was why the scars mattered.

He shut his eyes, though it made no difference in the pitch-blackness of his room. He was sprawled on the bed lazily, his hands patting at his chest. He had seen it happen to her, watched Alec tear her face apart in more places he would've ever known she had had skin. He remembered the way he stood there, chained back, horror-stricken as he wondered if her mouth would fall off on the ground below her. She was doubled over, not even screaming, no. She was too noble, too…evil. And she was loving it. She simply breathed heavier and heavier until she made a sickly gagging sound when they toyed with her ear. Alec was laughing, laughing…crying as he watched her bleed all over herself, unable to open her eyes lest they be filled with her body fluid. Still, he could only watch as he was left immobile while she was being torn to shreds in front of him.

Her name was Lorelei, and she had never been beautiful.

She had been so corrupted from the beginning. All she had ever wanted was money and beauty and sex. He wondered for a moment why she had even bothered with him at all that night—when they had first met. He swallowed hard as he thought of how pleased he had been with her, having let him have his way while his scarred face stared back at her coldly, compared to the way she grinned and laughed, gasping and breathing like she hadn't had air in a thousand years. She was the prostitute, and he was the needy. Lorelei was somewhat above average in weight terms. She was well proportioned, sure, he recalled with a smile, but she was bigger than the others. Racking his brain, he could not think of why _he'd _bothered with _her_. He could have chosen any of them, but she was the one who carried that air of…

Murder. She had almost begged him to tie her to the bedposts. That was what she wanted. Pain.

Lorelei loved pain. Besides her regular obsessions, it was the thing that was on her mind the most. She had been born without any morals or value of human lives. She just wanted to get what she wanted, and whoever stood in the way had to leave. She had plenty of money to be well off, so her prostitution had nothing to do with making ends meet. Lorelei was just… "A whore…" he breathed desperately, almost in admiration. But he liked her; the way she had begged, the way she had finally made him feel like he could control something. Then he started to care for her, because then, he was allowed to.

She gambled, too. She wanted money, money, money and all that adventure. Each night he would call her, and each day he would tell himself a long narrative of why he didn't need to have her every night of his life. Eventually, he did need to, or she would have vanished from the face of the earth. Lorelei hurt and liked it just as she liked to hurt people in return. And the way she loved to be in pain was going to end her up in the most horrific scenario she would have imagined for herself. He couldn't think of anything to do with his feelings but force her to marry him, just to keep her out of trouble. He wanted her to be safe because…maybe he did love her. Did he? "Nah," he reminded himself with a swish of the hand. "Nah, she _needed _me…" At first she didn't want to give up that life she was leading, but he could compromise…of course he could. She didn't ask that he gave her what she wanted; she asked for him to let her have her way with him, and that meant that he was going to have to be her victim.

She racked up enemies—fast. Alec Savage was her first and last. They were gambling partners, until she started to try conning him out of their winnings. He found her out fast, because Alec was more intelligent than she could've even hoped to be. Once she was discovered, he started raising threats until it was time he carried them out.

That was Alec Savage, scheming but with good reason. Lorelei needed to be disciplined.

He had never seen her cry in his entire life until she caught sight of her face after her visit to the hospital. Blood was caked all over the dried cuts and stitches and she looked like a complete mess of the thing she loved most: pain. He cried, too, he remembered with disgust. Having to watch her be carved dry and not have been able to help her. Then soon after she went completely off, wanting nothing more than "to be happy again, my little jokester, and I need a happiness I can't get with just pain". She would say, "I don't want the pain anymore, as much as I _love _it…no…no, no, I want _death_, because it's the only damn thing in this world that I can't have."

His breath was hot and bothered. He shifted on the bed and remembered their final conversation before she left:

"Be with me," she said, her voice tinted with longing as she pulled open her shirt. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair as her black-lined eyes stared back at him lustfully. He sipped at the wine she had poured for him; the third cup she had offered. "Be with me when I do it…let us be making love…and I'll do it right then and then I'll be happy." He tried to avert his gaze but before he knew it she was pressing herself against him back into the dresser. "Please do this for me," she begged, catching the piercing gaze he only gave unwillingly. "Don't you want me to be happy? Listen…I can't take having this face…I can't keep looking like this or I'll shoot myself anyway. Come on…"

He remembered exactly what it felt like to watch his sanity pour out from his mouth and evaporate on the floor at her words. He wanted her to die. He wanted her to kill herself, but he wanted to kill her at the same time. He wanted himself to die because she was right: death was the ultimate satisfaction and the most beautiful form of happiness when pain could no longer suffice. But he knew then what he wanted to do as she so selfishly complained of her own scars while he stood before her with his. Sure, they weren't as great.

He could make them great.

"I got something for you," he whispered to her, the idea having hatched. "I'll be right back. You stay…right here…" He kissed her forcefully and pushed her away, walking to the bathroom and slamming the door behind him. Looking around briefly, he caught sight of the razor she had kept in the cabinets. Smiling at it, gazing at himself in the mirror, he twirled it in his hands before sliding it between his lips. Oh, the feeling of the blade, the way it sent sparks down his spine when he remembered his mother and father…such good people…

Wicked, heartless bastards, those good people were.

He pulled at his face with the razor. It took a moment before it penetrated and his mouth split yet again, just where the previous scars had been as if marked in a trail. He had to stop to laugh, the blood pouring into his mouth and into the sink. And he wasn't even finished yet!

He stopped and grinned in a regretful way. There is no past, he thought drudgingly. Stemming the flow of his quickly moving memories, he thought of his wife namelessly. They were still married then, weren't they?

Unable to stand all the feelings, the reminders, that stabbing feeling in his aching heart, he wrenched himself to his feet with a growl of hatred. It was Fana's fault. Everything was Fana's fault, because if she hadn't been there…if she had never come, he would've been doing something to mess with Gotham's mind. Was it his fault that he hadn't known who she would end up being to him when he spun her around and backed into the elevator with her during Harvey's party? "I didn't do it," he snapped, angry with himself for even suspecting it. "It's _Fana's _fault." Her name poured from his mouth with added spite, hating the way that he was only alone when he went to his room, and even still, he could see her face in his mind whenever they were apart. He _hated _it and he hated her for being there to slowly poison him. "Strychnine," he muttered, considering poisons. "You should have used Strychnine, missy. Not these _hellacious_…" He unbolted the top lock of his door. "These demonized, non_sens_ical…" The second and third locks. "These sickening, disgusting…_morbidly good_…" He wrenched open the door of his room and stormed into the hallway, his jaw tensed. "…Those _feelings_," he finished, his throat clogged with some sort of discomfort.

He had left his jacket in his room. The chain hung from his belt loop made a clinking noise as he bounded down the stairs. One of his knives was poking at the palm of his hand as he squeezed it in his fist, the blade threatening to carve through the material of his gloves. Pain was unnecessary and the funny thing about it was that it defined a person's character. How they stood up to pain, how they looked at it, and what they would be willing to do to avoid it. He was the ultimate sort of person because not only could he stand up against it…

He loved it, just like Lorelei.

With a heightened sense of his awareness of her, he stared fixedly at the exit, knowing well that Fana was already staring at him. He held the knife tighter in his hands, wishing that he could calm himself with a little blood…just a little. He wiggled his fingers around the handle, trying to slice through the thick fabric of the gloves. By the time he had reached the door, he was still unsuccessful. He sharply threw it against the ground, knowing well he might not have ever gotten it back. Looking away from it, he pressed his weight against the door, and the minute the crisp air tainted his being, her voice traveled to his ears like a deathly hypnosis.

"Hey," she said, just barely loud enough to acquire his attention. He froze where he was, his eyes boring into the gray, solid door. "Where are you going?" she asked calmly. He wanted to cut her throat, perhaps because he wanted her to love it the way he did or maybe just to get her away from him—permanently.

He whirled around, stretching his mouth and glaring at her through his black eyes. "_I'm _getting away from _you_," he spat honestly, pointing to himself and then her demonstratively. Immediately, her face contorted into concern and she scrambled up from where she sat on the bench, shaking her head. "_You stay there_," he commanded loudly, finally ready to be as furious as he could with her. It made him feel alive and in control; what was best for him was that he get himself out of there. He could call the others later, tell them where to find him. Then Fana could find her own damn way home and he could go back to the way things were: perfect. "You make me…_weak_, Fana," he told her, steaming. Her mind was racing, but she could still recognize the way his voice sounded, curled around her name in complete seriousness. "And I don't like that very much. No, actually…let's be bold: I _hate _that, Fana Will-ana." He wanted to kick himself for even going so far as to say what he _was _saying. "Listen, doll face. I got—I _told _you to—"

"I know what you said." Fana's eyes were fiercely knowing, her tone just as firm and menacing. She was strolling toward him as though she had nothing to fear; as though she had no reason to be afraid for her life. She was wrong. When she had reached him she made a quick movement—too quick for his eyes—and she had snatched his wrist between her fingers in an instant. She pressed down, rolling his tendons but he determinedly ignored it. "You know what I can feel?" she asked him, her teeth bared. He wanted to know what reason _she _had to be at all angry, but he simply stared at the benches behind her. "Your heartbeat." He jerked his hand away.

"And why does that matter…hm?" he hissed.

"Be_cause_," she replied, "you look like a human being and you like to pretend you aren't one. But you know what? Your heart beats the _same_ way that mine does, and it beats every day to keep you alive. It fills up your whole body, just like mine does for me. And I'm human; you know what that means? Means you're _just like me_." At that point, he had to laugh. And to think he'd thought she was learning for even a split second…

"I'm not," he told her, blinking very slowly. "No, I'm no_t_. And everything you think is—"

"Touch my skin."

He hesitated. "Excuse me?"

"Right here." She tapped the side of her face and said, "Just feel my skin for just a second. Take off the gloves." He stayed very still, his eyebrows having seemingly risen of their own accord. Then he giggled, his shoulders rolling backwards once in finality.

"No, thanks, doll face," he said under his laughter. "I got places to be…understand?" With no other warning but the churning of his stomach, Fana's fingers were sliding carefully against his, but she hadn't looked away from his painted face. His brain told him to protest, but it didn't seem able to make his nerves move. He started to say something.

"Shh…" Her lips poked out obnoxiously as she made the sound, her fingers tugging at his. She looked down at their hands as she pulled at his gloves; he found that he had no desire to go against what she wanted. That was what he hated. That was what he had to get away from. "Why are you so afraid of being weak?" she asked him in hush. "Why do you have to leave just because you feel human—the way you were made to be?"

"I'm _not _afraid," he corrected her. The first of his gloves that had been taking the knife wounds in place of his hands slid off into Fana's hand. He sighed, completely resigned. Momentarily, he made to pivot the slightest bit so that he could get out the door, but he decided against it to his disgust. "I just don't like it," he finished dimly. "I prefer to…just not care at all. And if I get to do that…well, kiddo, I don't even have to _prefer _anymore…do I?" He grinned. The skin of her fingers rubbed against his knuckles in a wisp, as if it hadn't even happened fully. "_You _make me prefer things _and _care," he accused in a low voice. She was raising his hand to her face as easily as if she were holding onto the string of a balloon. Maybe that's all he was, what with his mind gone completely blank. "You know…that I hate that…don't you?" He hated to see his bare hands, tainted with the chalky remnants of face paint. Not only that, but his forearms, toned and…normal could be seen without the sleeves of his jacket to cover them. He felt instantaneously debased.

Fana's face was smooth and soothing against his rough fingers. She didn't wince at the jaggedness of the nicks in his fingers given to him more usually by himself than any other. Even with the progress she had made, she was still pulling off his other glove as she leaned into his touch peacefully. "Stay," she told him softly. Even breathing seemed a task to him.

"Can't you just…" He pieced his words together, not knowing where else he could look but at her face. "You don't make _anything_…easy…you know that?" She didn't answer or falter whatsoever. "Let's say we go back to the way things were. Hm?" He nodded, but she still showed no sign of response. "Where you and me…hah…well, let's just say I was still the authority. I like that…" She could see the easing in his face, the lack of calamity that stemmed back all emotion. "You're acting the authority now," he finalized gently. "That…I don't like."

His eyes were soft though he maintained that pained expression of what might have been guilt or regret. Gradually, his hand has slid down from her face until it was back at his side, looking unfulfilled without it's dressing. "You…have me under your _control_…" he admitted dejectedly. "Hah…I miss holding the cards already!" Hatching an idea, he continued to speak. "That's okay. You're a die-trying fighter, missy. And you'd think that would be the very _top _of it, huh? No…no, no, I'm above…even that."

She didn't speak in reply. Instead, Fana hesitantly reached up and let her hand hover just above his cheekbone in thought. He cringed before she had even grazed his skin and almost jumped out of his shoes when the she touched him. The paint was caked though evenly spread, and it felt not much different than his regular, bare skin. She could tell, however, that if she moved her hand away, there would be splotches of white on her palm.

Fana leaned into him, and he to her in turn until he realized that it couldn't happen. He had let Fana step over the line loads of times; there was _always _a "too far".

"No, Fana—" He slid his fingers out of her grip and shielded himself from her, holding her back. "Fana…banana, not…I have…the _makeup_, hm? You don't—"

"I do," she interrupted, pushing past his arms and slowly inching forward, pulling him with her. "It's okay to be liked sometimes." When their lips met, he was breathing heavily, his eyes left unclosed and his arms limp. She could tell that the red paint covering his mouth was rubbing onto hers, but it was simply all the more reason to be interested; all the more reason to care. He relaxed at last and leaned back against the door, taking her with him. The door creaked as if to ask to be opened, but he ignored it, her warmth consuming him. Lorelei had never been so welcoming; only pathetic.

"Huh…" he breathed against her mouth as she toyed with a strand of his hair. "Let's say…maybe I like being weak sometimes, too." He could feel her smile. "I said sometimes, doll face…but hey…" There was a moment where his speech was muffled as she kissed him and he wanted to break out into laughter, but controlled himself. "I don't want a lot of things." He held her back so that she was looking at him, half-wishing he could successfully push her away and knife her. "See, I'm a guy of…simple taste. I just like to make my mark. But you know what I think? I think that when I want something…I don't wait for it. I _take _it." His fingers danced on her hips. "So…what I'm thinking is…that if I want something…it doesn't matter _what _it is. I'm taking it." Squinting and sucking at the inside of his mouth, he thrust Fana's hair uncaringly over her shoulder with one hand, leaning towards her. He pressed his lips to her ear and he could feel her kissing his neck as he did so. "This is what I _want_," he said slyly into her ear, kissing her out of pure reaction.

Joseph looked back at Andy with a disbelieving smile. "You were right!" he exclaimed to Andy's immediate silencing. He looked back at the boss who, any other time, looked like some kind of twisted king. In that moment, there was the Joker, acting on lust with his hostage, and it was true: she _wasn't _trying to get away. She didn't even look like she was planning some kind of escape or mutiny. Not the way she was leaning against him. "Boss has got it for the girl," he added in a whisper.

"So…what happens now?" Andy asked.

Joseph shrugged. "You're not thinking he's gonna change course, yeah? 'Cause…ain't no girl gonna change that guy."

"Huh. We'll see what happens. Let's keep checking. Only sometimes, though…"

_Well I wish there was someone  
Well I wish there was someone  
To love me_

_When I used to be someone  
And I knew there was someone  
That loved me_

_As I sit here frozen alone  
Even ghosts get tired and go home  
As they crawl back under the stones_

_And I wish there was something  
Please tell me there's something better  
And I wish there was something more than this  
Saturated loneliness_

_And I wish I could feel it  
And I wish I could steal it  
Abduct it, corrupt it, but I never can  
it's just saturated loneliness_

_Does the silence get lonely?  
Does the silence get lonely?  
Who knows?  
I've been hearing it tell me  
I've been hearing it tell me  
Go home_

_Cause the freaks are playing tonight  
They packed up and turned out the lights_

_And I wish there was something  
Please tell me there's something better  
And I wish there was something more than this  
Saturated loneliness_

_And I wish I could feel it  
And I wish I could steal it  
Abduct it, corrupt it, but I never can  
It's just saturated loneliness_

_And the bath waters cold  
And this life's getting old_

_And I wish I could feel it  
And I wish I could feel it  
And I wish I could steal it  
Abduct it, corrupt it  
And I wish I could feel it  
And I wish I could steal it  
And I wish I could feel it  
Abduct it, corrupt it  
But I never can  
I never can  
Never Can  
Never Can  
Never Can_


	19. Chapter 18: No Trace of A Smile

Chapter Eighteen: No Trace of a Smile

Strawberry: This chapter makes the 100-page mark in the Dark Knight document! Although for some reason, this chapter took me FOREVER, it's _still_ really short…oh well. I hope you enjoy the read! Let me know! :]

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He was leaning back against the door, sitting peacefully upright with his hands twirling around each other. Fana was beside him on the floor, edgily watching him as if to ask what made him change course so freely and easily. But she kept her questions to herself, knowing well they would either go unanswered or simply be laughed at. Sometimes he would really give her an answer, but the manner with which he did so put her out greatly, as it showed her how truly inhuman he was. In that back of her mind, she wondered if it really bothered her at all that he was insane; she couldn't possibly have blamed him, knowing that two of his most major family members had betrayed his childish trust. She wondered if he was really to blame for the third slicing of his smile. Had his wife honestly driven him to such a point that he'd felt so compelled to do such a thing to himself when he was already plagued with it?

"_You don't know the things she said."_ That was what he had told her so accusatorily based on her curiosity about what had mad him feel he needed to do it. He'd mentioned the day before that it had been the time when he had fully lost his mind and gone completely unattached, but his recognition of this happening seemed suspicious. A person couldn't have possibly thought that doing something so rash and violent could have saved someone else, no matter how dire the circumstances. He must have known it wasn't really going to help anything at all; maybe he had even known it would work the opposite way. Perhaps he had been conniving and was trying to get her to leave him for some obscure reason.

She gave up her assumptions, for she knew that no matter how far she twisted her mind to fit his criteria, she would still be completely unable to understand the things he did.

There was nothing to say, nothing to do as they sat beside one another, Fana having taken to picking at the floor tiles. He could tell that she was thinking a thousand things—it gave him a sort of prompting energy that wore him out at the same time. When she thought, he had only to enjoy it: the way her eyes started to close but refrained, the sight of electricity flowing through her veins, and her mouth sliding around as naturally as his. He wasn't like her—oh, no—but she was like him. On occasion, she had accused him of being like her, but she didn't know the half of it. It didn't _need _to go both ways; it only had to go the one way, and that one way was _his _way. If in her eyes, he was corrupt, than she was the same and nothing less.

"What are you thinking?" she asked out of the blue. He didn't trouble himself to look at her or shift at all in acknowledgment. It was no difficult question. It required no thinking, because he was already _thinking_ about the answer, since the answer was whatever he made from thoughts. _Sly_, he thought, remarking at the twister of the concept.

"Plenty of things, doll face," he chanted sardonically. "Like for me to share?" She nodded, and though he was not looking her direction, he continued as though he had seen her. "I'm thinking about how…Harvey _Dent _is still safe and sound. And, you know, thinking about Harvey Dent…makes me think about his ol' _squee_-zuh. Her name is…huh. Her name is…"

"Rachel," Fana inputted.

"Ha! There we go." The smile affecting his features was daunting. The sight of the half-wiped away paint lathered on his mouth made Fana unconsciously drag her hand across her mouth, turning away as she did so. She wondered if there had been red stained on her face, but decided instantly that there _must _have been. Sure enough, the back of her hand was smeared with red coloring. Entranced by what it meant, she stared at the streaks condemningly. They meant that she was completely incapable of a real human life or interactions with other people. They proved that she had let her wreck of a family have an effect on her, even though she credited herself with having masked it well. The only person she had really and truly interacted with and tried to form some kind of twisted relationship with was a murderer; a clown out of his mind. The fact was, it was the sort of fatal attraction that determined that she didn't mind because she wanted to understand him so desperately. Even so, they weren't really _attracted _to one another; they were just there, together, two members of the opposite sex in an icehouse. It was survival of the fittest, though she never needed affection.

Maybe she didn't know what she was saying at all.

Fana started to wipe at the red paint at her face again, wishing for a mirror so that she could tell whether it was all gone or not. When she lowered her hand back to the floor, he reached for it blindly, adjourning her actions and giggling over the way he knew her mind to be faltering. "That's a nice look for you," he told her plainly, nodding to her mouth. He wrapped his fist around her fingers tightly, giving her arm a jerk to persuade her continuation. "What do you say…you leave it there?" She shook her head and started rubbing at the paint with her other hand.

"No," she replied sternly.

"Oh." She wondered if she had offended him and made to express herself with less force, but not before he went on. "Guess you wanna…reapply it _later_, missy…"

She scoffed. "Funny."

"I _know_," he hissed. "So. You were asking me abou-_t_…what I was _thinking_, hm?"

"Yeah. Keep going."

He leaned back against the wall, making himself comfortable. "We were talking about Miss…_Rachel_…weren't we?" he assumed, smiling lightly. "You know somethin', doll face? _She _was the one who was supposed to be here…_right now_. The dashing D.A. would've done 'what was _noble_'…" He nodded. "He would have come after her _instantly_." Then he shook his head. "I'd say you were a…mistake. But…hah…I don't believe in those…" Her nose twitched involuntarily as if something he had said tickled her face, and it made him wince in turn at how stupid she looked. "But Harvey'd be dead…and the mayor…and Rachel might be dead, too, if I was in…the _mood_. And look where we are _now_…" His fingers tensed against hers. "I'm stuck with you and no one to kill."

Fana simply stared. She did not pull away from his grip or scowl at him; did not tell him he was insane or try to convince him that he had the wrong idea. She just sat there and watched him, perhaps because she was trying to filter in the "right" thoughts, whatever they were anymore. She just didn't know anything at all, she decided.

"I wanna _know _something," he piped up again. Before Fana even had the opportunity to ask him what he wanted to know, he was already clarifying. "I guess…hma…I guess _you _wouldn't understand…_doll_face. But…do something for me. Preten-duh…you know how _pleasing _it is to kill someone."

"I never will," Fana cut in crossly.

"You don't have to," he told her slyly. "Now…now here's what I wanna know… Have you ever thought about…what it feels like-kuh…to _die_?" He smiled at the look of surprise on Fana's stupid, human face. "I bet you have," he went on, without a reply. He hadn't expected one anyway. "Well…so listen. You can figure it out with_out_ dying…and you know, killing's the way to do it." She tried to stop him, but he merely spoke over her. "You just…have to _put yourself in their shoes_." The final word hung dryly in the air as if he would never stop purring the ending "s". "You see, there are…_different_ kinds of victims…you know. There's the ones that beg and the ones who just…don't seem to under_stand_ that…being 'strong' doesn't…hah…doesn't get you _anywhere_." He pushed his hair away from his forehead. "I wanna know…what kind of victim _you_ are."

Fana's insides twisted as she stared icily at him. She knew that he had promised her, that something had changed and that he wouldn't _really _try to kill her, even out of sheer curiosity over malice. But still…the fact that he had mentioned it sent a shiver down her spine. He spoke again, this time talking about how Fana seemed apathetic, how he predicted that she wouldn't even _care _if she died, and those were the most annoying kinds. He said, "I could never kill you…be-_cause_…you'd never give me that…mhoh…_deathly _satisfaction. Hah!"

He paused, and instantly, Fana took notice.

"What, may I _as-k_…is so wrong with being like me?" he proposed. He considered all the possible things she might have said, knowing she would have said hundreds of things. She might have said that he was too intent on killing, too unfeeling, too _wrong_. But whatever she said, it was all wrong. All they would ever be were memories on the earth; a piece of history. He wanted to be remembered, and he was already well on his way to staying in the minds of Gotham for the next five hundred years. Fana wasn't going to be remembered. She wasn't even in anyone's mind in that very moment, as shown by the lack of any action her captivity had given him. No one had come to save her or even betrayed Harvey. Some would have said that he had been wrong, and society would simply turn on one another in such a way, but he knew that wasn't the case. He knew that Fana was clearly useless to the rest of the world. She hadn't made her imprint, and if she didn't start trying to soon, she'd leave the world and her name would never pass anyone's lips.

His, however…hah, they wouldn't be able to get _enough_ of talking about that pesky Joker!

"Nothing…" His head snapped in her direction, hardly believing that he had heard her correctly. He raised his eyebrows in mock interest. He thought of the words to conflict her with, searching for her motives while he did so. Fana sighed, completely resigned. She was emotionally tired and overly drained to the point where she felt it completely acceptable to just let him have his cake and eat it too.

"Say that again," he told her strictly.

"There's nothing wrong with being like you," she repeated with more clarity. He couldn't even bring himself to believe that she had really said it, much less mean it. She wasn't necessarily surprised at herself; maybe it was just that she was tired of looking for all the fault within his thought patterns. It might have been time she honestly _tried _to understand. She couldn't believe that he had simply been born with all the murderous intent and psychopathic thinking. He must have been born as a regular child but into a family—or lack there of—situation that stunted his regular, human mind. It must have been hard, and though she knew she wanted to help him be what she knew he had the potential to be, she had to try her best to understand first and foremost.

He never answered her repetition of the words, but Fana knew that he had heard. They simply continued to sit there, his hand grasping hers with his rough, jagged skin. It was those moments she appreciated most; being able to see him simply looking, without the trace of a smile.


	20. Chapter 19: Love's Demon

Chapter Nineteen: Love's Demons

Strawberry: This chapter is unhealthily short, just to make up for the fact that chapter 20 is RIDICULOUSLY long. And I also needed a bit of a bridge between 18 & 20… I'm also quite sorry about the long no-update period :[ I didn't have time when _Oklahoma!_ went up, and right after that I started Cinderella, so things have been a bit hectic. My would-be boss hasn't called me, though, so at least I'm not working xD Anyway, I hope to get this story finished by the end of this summer. Its one year anniversary is coming up! Let me know what you think.

* * *

About ten minutes later, Fana's head dropped reluctantly onto his shoulder. He jumped at the feeling of her against him, but otherwise, completely ignored her actions and continued to stare straight forward.

"Are you afraid of _anything_?" she asked him. He had heard her with perfect clearness, but he still might have sworn that she had really been saying, "What's wrong with you?" He pondered the real question, half-sure he would find nothing and half-afraid of finding the answer. He was afraid of finding the answer, but it didn't make any sense to explain it to her. He would have bet his life—which didn't say much—that there was nothing in the world that he feared. He wasn't irrational or oversensitive to what the world threw at him. He knew how to handle it all.

Maybe he was only afraid of not being able to handle it.

"Mm…no," he lied tactfully. "Would you like it…ha…ah, heh…if I _were_?"

Fana craned her neck to look up at him with his smeared face and scheming eyes. They were locked together for one supreme moment, promising one another that they truly existed even in their wrongs. They were both imperfect, and if they were anything less than that, they would have hated each other. Her eyes were dim and glorifying, telling him a thousand things he might never have known of otherwise. With those eyes, she scrutinized him indirectly, and he knew beyond a doubt that she was staring indecisively at the paint.

Her fingers touched his neck, pushing him away from her as she gently touched his skin with her mouth. Her lips were comfortable, though tensed. He knew well what she was thinking: she was wondering what the hell was wrong with her, and if she weren't wondering that, he would've considered her the smartest human. But she wasn't.

"If you were afraid," she whispered, tugging on his sleeve tightly, "I wouldn't mind." He hated the way she touched him for the specific reason that he liked it. He was right, and she was the loser, he the winner. Even so, it annoyed him to no end that his body reacted to hers just as though he wasn't who he was meant to be. It was marked in stone that his name was eternally buried, his gravestone bearing not the name, but the alias. The things he loved were inhuman and he was pleased with that. The things he hated didn't exist because too much emotion was senseless and forbearing. He must have been wrong to say that Fana's touch positively affected him. He had to have been wrong, because he liked to lie to her and toy with her mind. He liked to make her feel little and pointless. He felt like a demon sometimes because of it, as he had known what it had been like to be little and pointless. He had known what it was like to know that when you died, you would never be remembered. It had not been so long ago that he had felt that way.

Through all of that, she was still snuggled up against him like a helpless child, unable to understand that her mother was masochistic and her father was a wreck. She would follow after them stupidly, regardless of how many times they struck her down. They had that same relationship, with him as the abuser and she as the countless victim who didn't understand. He reminisced back to what he had said a few minutes before. He'd told her about his curiosity for murdering her, a curiosity that she would never understand and minutes later she was against him still, letting him squeeze her hand with no purpose whatsoever.

Was a man supposed to love a woman simply because she accepts him in all his glory and downfall?

He must have loved her then, because she had sat beside her and proven that she was sticking herself to him almost permanently. Even in that very moment, when he was afraid to even shift slightly lest he disturb her, she proved that nothing he said bothered her. Maybe in the pit of her stomach, all of those things did bother her, but in general, she kept herself from judging him. He wondered if their similarities were the reason. She was corrupted because her father had indirectly killed her mother, while she was forced to take the blame for not being able to stop it. She was laden with that feeling of guilt and terror that he had felt at eight-years-old when he knew well enough that his mother was held back because of him. He felt the same guilt when he was twelve, when his father had abused their family and proven to him that he had just made a mess by existing at all. He had been an accident, and accidents didn't deserve to live, did they?

Lorelei had given him that stabbing feeling of guilt, too, because he felt as though it were his duty to protect her when it was really nothing of the sort. She had made it impossible for him to leave her alone because she had hooked him with her reckless sense and love for danger. And what was worse, he was reminded of his helplessness towards her injuries each time he had looked at her. He knew what it was to feel that way, and he understood that Fana hadn't been smart enough yet to realize what she needed to do with those pestilent feelings that didn't want to be crushed. But that was the part of being better than best: being able to crush the uncrushable.

His eyes fell on her face restlessly. Her lips were almost purplish from the cold icehouse; they were thin and parted in her doze. She must have fallen asleep a few minutes ago, because she looked to be in that state in between waking and being out cold. Drifting. Her wild hair brushed against the collar of his shirt, close enough to touch his neck in little wisps, as if she were made of smoke. He rested his head against the wall behind him lazily, thinking that he might be okay. Of course, he didn't really care, he thought with a smile, but there were plenty of nice aspects to the answer.

Clearly love had its demons, too. And he himself was the king of those demons: Love's demon himself.


	21. Message to Readers: Apologies

Hi, guys ^.^

It's time for my second personal message in the middle of my story . Just wanted to once again apologize for not being around for updates; I honestly have pretty much the whole story down, but I don't spend so much time on the computer now that I'm working and taking driver's ed and participating in yet another (this time ridiculous) play… As I said, I slacked off towards the end of _Oklahoma! _because of the amount of time I spent at school—I didn't get home until 10:30 after being at school all day and having woken up at 7:00 D: Needless to say it was rough and I had ZERO time. Also in that frame of time, my boyfriend and I had a falling out and we had a couple of issues to take care of. We've been pretty stable again for a while now (yay 10 months!) so I assume with all these things generally lightening up and it being summer and not _as _difficult, I'll have no problem getting the rest of the story published in due time :]

Thank you again for putting up with me. I hope you still enjoy the story and continue to the end. If you've been around since the beginning, MAJOR kudos, because it's surely been a rough ride x]

Love,

Strawberry

P.S. Sorry for the false story alert you probably got .


	22. Chapter 20: Most Valuable Card

Chapter Twenty: Most Valuable Card

Strawberry: Disappointment of the day: My Dark Knight DVD now skips because I play it too much. FML.

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It was the third day he had neglected his makeup. Given, not all consecutively, but either way, it made Fana feel accomplished, and he could tell by the way she had an air of vanity as she walked to meet him by the ice rink. His head swung on his shoulders, as if ashamed. Perhaps he was. He was still not sure what it all meant. He knew for certain that Miss Fana Williams was going to lose the game. _Maybe_, he thought to himself, _this is a…a _bad _game._ At this, he gave a chuckle, because even if it_ were _a bad game, that would only make it all the more entertaining, wouldn't it?He was thinking of his identity far more than he ever would've imagined himself to. Even when he had kept his identity—which must have been two decades ago, when he was only six—he had never thought of it as much as he did at that moment. He thought of his age, his happiness, his material things, his physical fitness, his name…how he thought of his name.

He knew what he wanted to say to her as she approached airily. Her steps were the steps that a woman would take if she were walking on clouds. But still, even as she floated, he was going to ask, even if she was whisked away with the wind when obliged.

"If…if I took you out_side_…" he started quietly. He stared at his feet determinedly, clicking his heels together. He smiled at the sound they made like knives being clinked together. "Would you…run away, per chance-suh?" he finished at last, twisting his mind to try to make himself feel bigger than he was acting. She looked utterly taken aback. "Would you leave me…hah, all by my _lonesome_, doll?" His face fell somewhat stern, trying to hold himself back. Fana's eyes were glistening prettily; he thought with a twinge of guilt that they must have been golden in the moonlight.

She took a step towards him. Cautiously, he tried to be discreet as he adjusted his position to be sure that he was blocking the door. "No." Her voice trickled to his ears like a leaky faucet. "I don't want to leave. Not yet." Her heart was beating strangely. It was not in sync and skipped beats, then sped up and missed more. He seemed to have noticed, perhaps by some look she wore on her face, but he did not address it. Instead, he reached for her and propped the door slowly open behind him. Fana stayed where she was a moment longer to assure him that she was not ready to go anywhere. He nodded, understanding; smiling against his scars as if only to remind her that they existed.

The moment she had reached him, he turned to exit the room but she stopped him with a gentle jerk at one of his belt loops where she had wrapped her index finger. He looked back, not expectantly, but curiously. He let out something between a grunt and a sigh, shaking his head jerkily as if a fly had been buzzing around his face. "Wha_t_…can I _do _for you?" he asked with an air of impatience.

The three topmost buttons of his oxford shirt were undone, for whatever reason. His prominent collarbone was peeking out of his shirt fabric, the skin stretched across it necessarily even. Serenely pulling at one side of the shirt, she kissed him just below the collarbone. He could almost feel himself being dowsed in steaming water, and he had to suppress the laughter it instilled within him. If he had laughed, she would've stopped. "Do you think I want to leave?" she asked him, pressing her lips to his Adam's apple. She felt him swallow. The nape of his neck, his jaw line, his earlobe…warmth.

"No," he answered, narrowing his eyes at the wall behind her.

"I don't," she repeated.

"Mmm…hm."

Her hands found his abdomen. Her fingers were dancing, crawling, itching to move… He grinned at the sight of her determination to what, seduce him? Or was it for her own pleasure? "Well," he said aloud, and perhaps Fana had gotten used to him enough to expect his thoughts to trail directly into words with no transition. "Makes…ohah…no _difference _to me…" he hissed into her hair. She looked up then curiously, and he made to kiss her but stopped himself to say, "Hm…huh. Wait _just_…a little—second." Before she moved, he had opened the door and led her outside, the sight of even the lunar lighting startling her now fluorescent-trained eyes. His fingers were entwined in hers, squeezing lightly in transgression. She tugged back, gazing at the night sky. She had been inside the icehouse for days; it must have been six, or even a full week by that point. The summer breeze and nighttime coolness mesmerized her enough that her eyes closed, smelling the crisp, freshness of the air.

"Beautiful…" she said under her breath. The word seemed to float away on the clearness of the night.

"Oh, Fana banana, you've _got to stop _being so…self-absorbed," he taunted. "Now listen, angel cakes, that whole conceit thing…" He shook his head. "…Even if…you know, what you say is _true_, it's just not…a _sexy _quality."

Fana was almost astonished. She raised her eyebrows and leaned back to stare at him. "Excuse me?" she said.

"You know. It doesn't make me wanna…just…climb on top-puh and _do _you—"

"You're sick."

"Hey, now." He started to walk around, letting his hand slide from hers as he went. "We already know that…" he whispered as he came around to her. "We, uh…aha, hey, look, kiddo, I called you beau-ti-ful. Leave me with, uh…a little _dignity_. Hah!" He pressed himself against her back, wrapping his arms around her and burying his face in her shoulder. He breathed deeply, feeling unfamiliar feelings that he found himself unable to name or even describe. His mouth was trailing lightly along her shoulder, up her neck, across her jaw, behind the curtain of waving hair stretching down her back. Fana let her head fall back, allowing him more territory and soaking in his closeness along with the moon's glow. It was as though they had not been talking at all. She felt his mouth open wider, his teeth grazing her skin.

"How long do I have…until you run?" he asked her breathily. She gasped slightly and jerked her head forward when his teeth started to sink increasingly deeper into her neck. The motion did not have any apparent affect upon his own actions. His tongue was running dangerously around with free reign, teasing her mind and stomach into a potion-like combination of discomfort and pleasure. He chose the place that tasted most like the sweetest candy and sucked at it, absorbing the flavor on his taste buds welcomingly. She could feel her blood rising to the surface of her skin.

"However long it takes to make you want to run with me," came her answer.

He let go of her skin, his heart racing for whatever reason. He had the feeling of having just run a marathon, unable to catch his breath. His brain felt empty and full at the same time, and he could not collect his thoughts or even push them away for the time being. He did know for certain one thing: every single thought that preoccupied his mind revolved entirely around Fana. It was funny, if only because he could almost taste her reaction before he said it. "Lemme let you in on…a secret…of mine," he said to her.

Fana had to bite her tongue when she felt the urge to say, "Another one?" When she had swallowed the words and had overcome the feeling of his hot breath on her skin mixed with the cool air of the moonlit night, she said instead, "What's it about?" As though she had said something shockingly more offensive, he scoffed and swung her side to side somewhat more violently than she would have preferred.

"Now is that _so _important?" he asked her earnestly.

"I…think so, probably," she answered. "I mean, in the past few days you've told me a good amount of 'secrets' and I think that it's better to have at least an _idea _of what's coming. Honestly, I would just rather—"

"Shh, shh, shh. I love you."

She suddenly determined that all the oxygen around her had been depleted and replaced with carbon dioxide. Her throat called for a breath, one little inhale of air, but she could not seem to work her mouth into it. Her stomach twisted around itself—that, or one of her lungs had fallen on top of it and was determinedly squashing it. Her heart must have still been in its place, for it was bounding against the inside of her body jerkily. She worked her brain to repeat his words though she knew exactly what he had said. "You…no, you don't," was all she could say in reply.

He did not stop his actions; did not stop kissing her neck, burying his face in her hair. He did not freeze, startled or embarrassed. He did not let go of her, hurt or angered. He simply went on as if she had not even spoken. "Don't I?" he said simply, pressing himself more resolutely against her. She couldn't answer for what could have been minutes, and during that time there was absolute silence. When any noise was made, it was not done by her. She nearly jumped out of her skin at the suddenness of his loud, hollow laughter raging in her ear. On no other occasion had she noticed how fully his succumbing laughter had overtaken him; with it came the shaking of his entire body, something so powerful that all his bones and organs might have been in motion as well.

It was plain, blissful hilarity to see how Fana reacted, to see the very power of his words when they were simply words as he thought he'd taught her. Four was just a pronunciation of a value…in every other language, the word was different, and in the end it meant the same thing. The word love meant nothing, because all it did was express something that couldn't be made sense of. It was just a feeling, and those weren't what mattered. All that needed to be done was teaching those who didn't understand, and being remembered. Love had nothing to do with it.

"How many women have you said that to?" Fana was just as surprised as he was to hear the words coming out of her mouth. As if she had lost control of herself, she felt compelled to turn and face him. His embrace unlocked and he dropped his arms slowly to his sides, squinting at her but hardly caring at the same time. He was smirking as if he had said he loathed her rather than what he had really said. He looked barely phased, barely uncomfortable, barely _in love_.

"Including…ah, you?" he suggested, raising his eyebrows and cocking his head to the side expectantly. Fana shook her head. "Then…" He counted several fingers lengthily, finally curling his hand into an "O" shape. "Zero." Fana put her hands on her hips, and as though Christmas had come early, his eyes followed the action closer than she had thought possible.

"You were married," she reminded him scathingly.

"Aha, I was!" he said. "I was, I was, I was…" He took a miniscule step forward: the biggest step he could have taken without walking straight into her. Fana did not avert her sharp gaze from his face, though she was tempted when she began to wonder if they were standing on a hill. He had never looked so particularly towering on any other occasion. He looked down in a looming sort of fashion, the angle making his eyes look more foreboding than they had done without the makeup. "But you asked…if I meant it."

"You…told me that you missed her, though," Fana protested.

"_Missed_, doll face…" he hummed darkly. "Not loved. And…you know something? The thing about little things like…_love_…is that…hah, it's never _qu-wite _as _vitallll_ as you think it is." He watched Fana's yellowy eyes take on seventy different emotions all in quick succession. What mattered most to him was that she was thinking about what he'd said and even if she decided not to agree in the end, he had made the point, and she had only proven it further. But even as he marveled at the recovery he had made as opposed to his reaction to her snooping in his room, he could not help but feel softened by those same eyes, whatever they were saying. They made him curiously drawn in, as if they could speak on their own. He tilted his head somewhat to the right, then the left and back again, checking to see if there was some sort of force field sucking up the air between them.

"…Was that the secret?" Her voice surprised him, as the silence had been so absolute that the change was made only drastically.

"Mmm…yes," he answered, his voice pouring from his mouth like a gas. He didn't love her, and he knew that as well as anyone else. But he liked her. He liked her mouth touching him, her hands, her hair, her neck…and God only knew she was the only one whom he liked _anything_ about. That must have counted for something, because it meant that he hadn't lost himself in any way. She was fun, and there was no blaming a person for enjoying fun. He wasn't having to compromise emotions as he had worried, and he discovered that even if he did love her, it was because they were the same, and he knew she had the potential to be nearly as intelligent as he was. She could understand laughing, fun, _killing_… He had the faith that he could mold her just the way he wanted until she was his spitting image but with red hair. He did not want her to choose scars or anything of the sort, simply because of his own physical preferences. But if she could be changed into what he wanted her to be—and he knew that she could be—was there any harm in falling in love with her _then_? Was it still a sign of weakness, or could he be allowed the feeling just because he loved her faults and evils over her good traits?

Monsters were allowed to love monsters.

Fana said something that he did not catch. It did not much matter to him because he was taking the time to analyze, and he had already known so much that it was only fitting that he discovered more.

His eyes were understanding. He still did not look human; he did not seem able to curve his mouth downward, even enough to stop smiling for a millisecond. He was not offended, she noted, that she had made no other response. _It's not like he's a regular man_, she reminded herself. He did not need to hear it back because he did not care about anything. Maybe he was simply lying. She considered it as she waded in his dark eyes.

She didn't love him. But she liked him. That was what frightened her. Maybe she was losing.

His eyes dipped to her mouth when she took up chewing on her already chapped lips. She licked them, hearing that disgusting sound of her own saliva swishing in her mouth as she did it. "Ah," he whispered. "Nervous?" He pecked her lips only twice, enough to awaken her desire. "For _wh-at_? Is it be-cause…you _know_…what you are?" Regardless of his attempts, Fana put her hands on his neck and guided him to her again. He did not protest but to smile against her lips and resisting slightly if only to tease through her closed eyes she could see the moonlight pouring over them. She relaxed into him, somewhat surprised to find his tongue running against her lips gently until she accepted him, darting her own into his mouth, eager mostly for the scars. She hated herself for it as she ran her tongue along the inside of his cheeks, bumpy and jagged. At one point he jumped, as if in pain, but she could not retract. She pressed forward, her hands reaching for his so that he could restrain her if she could not do it on her own.

"The scars," he whispered into her mouth. Again she could feel him grinning. He flicked the tip of his tongue against hers and stood suddenly as still as stone. "Do that again…" She obliged helplessly, feeling around his mouth, observing the pain they must have caused. When she stopped, he continued to speak into her throat. "I like that…" he said, his fingernails digging into her back. She hardly cared. "I like it, I _like _it. You…feel like _ice_."

She pulled away momentarily, not knowing where her current thoughts had come into play. "You…" She was not sure how to phrase her thoughts without it sounding like she was encouraging the past to resurface. "On the news…a while ago," she started edgily, "there was this story about a bank robbery." He made a low grumbling noise in the back of his throat. "You were a part of that, weren't you?"

He hummed distractingly. He spouted out a series of lyrics to a song she did not recognize. He was looking off now in a different direction, though his eyes looked unfocused. She ignored his noise and asked, "What did you do with the money?"

His eyes dimmed slightly and his forehead wrinkled in thought. He might have been offended, but Fana's suspicions dwindled when he finally answered. "Nothing. I did _nothing_…with the money."

"Did you take it just to say you had it?"

"No, hah…never just for that. I took it just in case."

"Well…" She ran the palms of her hands over his forearms. He did not seem moved. "What if…you used it to get surgery? The scars would be gone and—even if you say you don't believe in it—the past would stop haunting you. Wouldn't that make you feel better?" He shook his head immediately, not even considering her words. She had a lot to learn. However, he did appreciate the genuine intention with which she had asked the question. Still, he shook his head.

"I don't _care _about it," he told her, unsure within even himself if he were lying or not. "I'm not…a _die-hard _money-waster. I don't…I don't _care _about…money, and what it can do for me. It's _paper_, for God's sake. And _paper_ being exchanged for…" He shrugged his shoulders as he considered the options. "…Having doctors ssssticking things in your face like…heeheh…like you're some kind of…balls-out _victim_. I, Fana _ba_-nana, _have _victims. And anyone who has them can't _be _one. I didn't do it for my _darling_ wife, and I'm not doing it for me."

Fana was silent. Then, "You never told me that story." He knew just what he meant, with no clarification necessary. He looked at her briefly, then proceeded to lower himself messily onto the ground before her, his mind racing with thoughts of what to say or whether he ought to say anything at all, for that matter. Did anyone need to know? Of course they didn't, and Fana was no exception. And yet, he found himself speaking all the same, as if he couldn't control himself.

"I married her because…aha…she was a mess," he began. She sat along with him. "She was a danger to herself…and everyone she knew. She lived for the stakes, see…the excitement, the _thrill_ of…'jus-t once more, it'll be okay'. And she, doll face, had that money problem: placing all that…_im-por-tance_ on paper. Money-hungry—that's what she was. Sometimes…we were rich. Oh, but don't worry…we'd always be poor again. It was an addiction. One day…one of the days she had lost everything, she started racking up a debt. And luck…no longer wanted her around. Haha…for two weeks, debt _swarmed_ on in until they _finally_ came to colle-_ct_ it. She couldn't pay so…" He whipped his hand through the air, imitating the slashing of a knife. "They carve her face. Over her eye so that she could barely open it, below her nose so that it hurt to inhale, across her mouth so that her own _saliva_ _tortured_ her. She didn't do anything anymore. She begged for surgery some nights—_begged_—until she just…broke down and lost it completely. You wanna know what she said?" He lay back on the ground, shivering once when Fana's hand journeyed down his chest to his stomach. She didn't answer. "She tells me…haha, she's got a gun to her head. And she tells me she's gonna kill herself." He sighed, remembering just as clearly as he had done a few nights ago when he had been lounging on his bed, letting his mind race freely to whatever subjects it chose to pursue. "Proves to you…that no one is immune from insanity." His voice trailed off. "I embraced that."

She sat on top of her legs, his head rested lazily in her lap. Her hands tangled in his hair, tugging lightly, making him close his eyes in peace. He could see how quickly his own chest rose and fell, knowing that he had never been so tired in his life. He didn't mind so much that Fana was wearing him thin down to the core. He chewed on the inside of his mouth, wincing every so often just as he imagined her to be doing as he tossed his saliva. "Tell me something," he said sleepily. She stroked his forehead with the backs of her fingers. His eyes dimmed against the snowy glow of the moonlight.

"What do you want to hear?" she asked in hushed tones.

"Anything you want to tell me." He looked up at her, rotating himself onto his stomach to look at her. "Tell me…mha, see if you _know _one of the few things I _don't_."

She smiled. "You tell me something first. I can't think of anything."

As if he had expected this answer, he propped himself up on his elbows and said, "Lay down with me." She obeyed. She admired the way he seemed to glow under the night sky, his face rested casually in his hand as he fiddled with the chain hung from his pocket. She was doing nothing but grinning at him, though his attention was determinedly elsewhere. "There are pretty things in the world, banana," he told her distantly. "There are Jolly Ranchers…and…and there's spinach. But it's all food, you see?" Daringly, he reached a hand up to his face and traced the scar on the left side with his finger. She watched, enthralled. He took advantage of that, feeding off of her emotions. "There's pretty people and ugly people…however you want to take that…but they're still peo-ple, hmm? See, the world is made up of—let's see—_two_ things: the nice and the nasty. And doll face…no one's going to take out the nasty stuff for you…it'll all be left there, because if it wasn't, there'd be no _point_ to people like me." She started to protest, but the minute her mouth had opened the slightest bit, he shot forward and distracted her with a kiss. He had been smiling moments before, but in an instant, it changed to an innocent expression of bewilderment. His eyes scanned her face as she lay on her back. For one hellacious moment, he recognized that she was the ultimate victim. He had gotten her to the point where her wild trust in him could have enabled him to do anything. His leg twitched, aware of the knife in his pocket. _I could kill her…_ he thought darkly. _I could kill her in an instant and it would be…perfect. _

She flinched when he rolled over on top of her, and his mind had gone blank. Their stomachs were pressed pleasingly against each other's, and he leaned down to whisper in her ear, "I don't love you." She laughed. It made him smirk. "I wouldn't blame myself…if I did, though. In fact…I almost look _forward_ to it." He pushed her hair away from her forehead somewhat roughly. She winced at that point, seeming to recognize her position of vulnerability. "And it'll be_ better_ than if anyone else bothered to love you…oh, and they won't…because…I _have_ to be the be_st_-tuh. _Always_ the record-setter… The Joker's not in every card game, kiddo. But when he is…he's your most valuable card."

She felt safe and endangered at the same time pinned below him, his broad shoulders curled around her possessively. "Mine," he kept whispering. Sometimes he lifted her, her arms around his neck securely enough to stay with him with ease. "You _belong_ to me…you're a _t_oy. You don't have a say in the matter. Sorry…"

There wasn't any arguing. Fana Williams was hooked on a drug that she wondered if she would ever escape before it killed her. She was afraid then, not because of all the things he could have done to her, but because she couldn't bring herself to fear him. She knew she should have, and she knew beyond all else that the feeling of sunken organs within her had only to do with what she knew she should have felt: fear. Where was fear then, when she needed to break her addiction? She was injecting him into her veins with pleasure, even though she knew what it would do to her.

At some point in the evening, she managed a twinge of nervousness for her life.


End file.
